


This Darkness Waiting

by 3ves



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, From Dave's POV, Humanstuck, M/M, Minor Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Minor Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido, Pining, Urban Fantasy, Violence, abuse mention, chapters will get longer as i write more, classpect based powers, davecentric, davekat is the main relationship but Rose and Dave get a lot of time together, more like people who don't initially like each other, not super enemies, parallel dimensions, slowburn, so much pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2019-06-01 06:25:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 62,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15137096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3ves/pseuds/3ves
Summary: Dave has just killed his brother with newfound magic that allows him to access a strange world Rose calls Derse. The problem? He might become stuck in Derse if he doesn't get a handle on the magic.Karkat, having received generations worth of knowledge about magic from his family, just wants to keep idiots like Dave from being consumed by it.





	1. Meeting Mr. Magic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey. I really don't know what's happening here. I've got this other work I kinda wanna do but fantasy stuff always calls so have this lil WIP. Also yeah, the title is a ref to Terry Pratchett. I googled Darkness quotes on GoodReads and Pratchett is like a fav of my bffsie.

You’ve just finished puking out the entirety of the inside lining of your intestines when you straighten, wipe your mouth on the back of a bloodied sleeve, and turn to stand on the edge of the world and look down. It’s a long fall into the darkness below. Whispers seem to call out to you from below your feet. You distantly recall the feeling of your converse against your brother’s chest as you pushed him away from you, recall the way he didn’t make a sound as he finally, finally lost, recall the way it hadn’t felt like a win. You stop thinking about that.

He’ll be falling for a while, you think. He’ll be dead before he hits the bottom, you think. There’s no coming back from a fall like that. You stop thinking. One of your feet lurch forward a centimeter. You have your sword firmly stuck into the hard packed Earth by your side and your fingers tightly clutched around its hilt.

You breathe in. You breathe out. You scrub your free hand down the side of your skinny jeans, leaving behind long bloody streaks on them. It would be so easy. Your fingers start to loosen as you lean forward.

“Are you okay?” a raspy voice startles you out of your stupor and suddenly you are no longer in Derse and you’re back in the real world, leaning over the edge of an apartment building in too-hot Houston. Your sword leaps upward in the palm of your hand as if by magic and you turn in one smooth motion to angle your sword in the direction of whoever spoke. It’s a boy, slightly shorter than you but built better. Less like he was stretched out by malnutrition and sword scars and more like he’s gotten actual meals.

He comes closer and gets a good look at you, takes in your skinny frame and dinged up sunglasses. There’s probably a suspiciously more than average amount of blood covering you. Most of it is yours. But not all. You try not to remember whose blood is on your sword and refocus on the matter at hand.

The kid’s casually swatted your sword to the side, like it’s a prop at an anime shop or a baton of cotton candy being waved at his face. He probably has a death wish. That’s probably why he’s chilling on some rooftop in the middle of 86 degree heat. He probably doesn’t know he stands in front of a murderer. Suddenly, you want to vomit again. Instead, you swallow and straighten your sword so that it’s pointed at his throat. Your hands are shaking. You can’t kill another person, but he doesn’t know that.

His frown deepens slightly as his eyebrows furrow closer together and he steps around your sword to get closer to you. So maybe he does know you’re not exactly in a killing mood right now. For a moment, you feel the world shift slightly and you’re both back on Derse, dying grass stretching out for miles and the edge of the world right behind you. Above, the blue noon sky has been replaced by a shifting lack of anything that you always feel could consume you. You blink and it’s all gone, replaced once again by the Houston skyline framing a boy with messy hair and a sweater that droops from his thin shoulders. You’re falling apart, honestly. The line between reality and Derse is really blurring right now and you don’t know if you can permanently crawl back from Derse.

When he talks again, part of you immediately latches onto his voice for some reason. It’s almost a growl and a little louder than what’s socially acceptable. You’re covered in blood and holding a broken sword though so you really don’t think you’re allowed to give a fuck about being socially acceptable.

“Stop pointing that shitty sword at me and answer my question already,” he says, and then enunciates very carefully, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fi-…” You trail off as the roof feels like it slips out from beneath your feet and you fall backwards, fingers loosening their tight grip on your sword. He catches you before you hit the ground, stubby fingers digging into your arms. You think you should stab him but instead your eyes slip closed. He’s cursing now and bundling you into his arms. You flail around uselessly but his hold only tightens.

“Stop fucking struggling, I’m trying to save you before you end up permanently in Derse.”

You don’t respond, passing out in his arms under an endless and starless void with your mind swirling with questions. How the fuck does he know about Derse?


	2. The Murder of a Maniac

The day you brought up killing your bro was a Tuesday. After days of absence, he’d returned home angry and itching for a fight. You had skulked around all week, avoiding his gaze and holing up in your room for as long as possible, only leaving to get food. The apartment was eerily quiet despite his return but you saw the tension in the set of his shoulders and the straightness of his mouth and knew what was coming. In preparation, you carried your sword with you everywhere and remained alert at all times, waiting for the sudden attack that would spell more pain and hurt.

It was in the midst of this that a crow darted into your room. You always liked to talk to the crows and sometimes even photographed them but, that god forsaken day, a crow flew in and you were too tense to stop yourself. Your sword had whipped out in a second, slicing straight through the bird and leaving a mangled mess of dead crow on the floor of your room.

You pride yourself on never crying, not even when Bro has truly fucked you up, but you cried that day as you packed the crow into a box to be buried later. Then, you had logged onto Pesterchum to talk to Rose.

\-- turntechGodhead  [TG]  began pestering tentacleTherapist  [TT] at 16:13 --

TG: not to be dramatic but i need your help  
\-- tentacleTherapist  [TT] is now an idle chum! --  
TG: dammit rose this is actually important  
TG: rose  
TG: rose  
TG: fuck  
TG: i just  
TG: goddammit rose im actually kind of falling apart over here like dont make me drop the cool kid act but i really fucking need you for once  
TT: I’m here. Dave, I’m here.  
TT: Forgive me for my brief absence. My mother and I were having a discussion.  
TG: were you just passive aggressively pouring liquor down the sink while asking your mom why she has the complete collection of saphos work  
TG: asking her about the gay gene shes threatening to pass onto her children  
TT: While the idea of a genetic code leading to an increased inclination toward being attracted to those of the same sex, what interests me more is how you implied my mother, who we both know is also your mother, has a gay gene to pass down to both of us.  
TG: fuck  
TT: However, let’s not take a walk down that path. It is paved in too many Freudian slips and I’d really prefer not to see you get hurt, brother dearest.  
TG: true sisterly love right here  
TT: Dave.  
TG: rose  
TT: Why did you contact me in so much distress?  
TG: i  
TG: i know youve asked me about this before and ive just been too cool to lay it out for your psychobabble  
TG: just going on about my unfulfilled oedipus complex arising from my lack of any formal parents other than a man who insists i call him bro  
TG: how  
TG:  
TG: can you help me kill my brother  


You didn’t go into the conversation hoping to plot a murder. Really, you don’t know what you were planning on saying. 

"Hey Rose, my brother might actually kill me sometime."

"Hey Rose, not everything is chill in the Strider household."

"Hey Rose, I think I might actually kill myself sometime."

It took a surprisingly little amount of time to convince Rose to help you. Part of you wondered how much she had managed to piece together over the years. The other part of you was just grateful that she understood.

Over the next week, Rose bothered you with all sorts of questions about where the body would be hidden and how you’d be able to kill him when you were obviously smaller. You had no idea. It was that Sunday that Rose messaged you around noon, interrupting your jamming session. Bro was out at the time, so you felt ok blasting music and wearing headphones even if it impaired your hearing.

\-- tentacleTherapist  [TT] began pestering turntechGodhead  [TG] at 12:16 --

TT: Dave, I did not believe it would be necessary to reveal what I am about to tell you for a few years.  
TT: While it is true I had planned on divulging this information eventually, I had hoped to expand my knowledge and understanding a little more to ensure you would not get hurt.  
TT: However, given your situation, which I previously hoped was not as drastic as I was led to think, I believe withholding this would be passively allowing you to remain in a dangerous household.  
TG: rose can you just get to the point  
TG: if this is about my shitty nonexistent plan for how to get away with murder  
TG: ill figure it out  
TG: itll be fine  
TT: I have a solution to your difficulties. You will find it absurd so I would like it if you could venture out to your apartment’s mailbox.  
TT: The mailman will be delivering a package I specifically sent to you shortly.  
TG: are you trying to be weird and mysterious because youre succeeding  
TT: Dave.  
TG: alright alright im going  


You rarely left your apartment except to walk to the corner store and stockpile on food with the cash Bro left in your room when you’d been more cool than usual. 

When you got down to the first floor, you spotted the mailman just leaving. Weird but not out of the question that Rose sent you down then. You unlocked your mailbox and pulled out a package, refraining from opening it until you were back in the safety of your familiar room.

It was a pair of sunglasses. A pair of sunglasses that appeared exactly like your own. You traded out your completely legit Ben Stiller sunglasses for the pair Rose sent you, mentally sending an apology to John. Once you’d done this, you realized that pesterchum was somehow being shown on your frames. You pulled out your phone to message Rose but she beat you to the punch as her purple text scrolled onto your glasses.

TT: While you cannot message me from there, my messages will be displayed on your screen.  


You took them off and returned John’s gift to their proper place on the bridge of your nose before slouching into your chair.

TG: thats cool and all but why  
TT: If you wear them when you fight Bro, I can help you.  
TG: i dont think a wall of purple text will help me very much rose  
TG: itll probably just distract me and youll end up with a dead dave on this end of our relationship  
TG: the whole point of asking you for help was to avoid dead daves rose  
TT: Dave, it doesn’t you strike you as strange that I managed to send you your glasses so that they would arrive precisely at a time when your brother is out of the house?   
TT: Or that I knew when to message you so that you would read a message from me on the glasses I sent you?  
TG: i mean  
TG: yeah it was a little weird  
TG: but thats just how things are with you  
TG: a little weird  
TT: I can see the future.  
TG: what  
TT: My mother — our mother — possesses an intuition regarding the arcane arts and, while I can’t speak for a gay gene, I can confirm there is one for magic.  
TG: wait what  
TT: I have been studying from my mother’s nearly unintelligible notes and prodding her for more obscure information.  
TT: She responds willingly but it is difficult to make sense of what she says when she is inebriated.  
TG: rose what  
TT: People may draw their power from two different sources, more accurately named lands or parallel universes. We draw our power from Derse. Others receive magic from Prospit.  
TG: rose  
TG: we?  
TT: There are risks that come alongside using this power though.  
TG: we?  
TT: I believe you can — No, I know you can — successfully kill your brother by using your bloodline to access Derse where you will be much more powerful than him.  
TG: so were just a messed up family of dumb oracles?  
TT: No.  
TT: My mother is capable of obscuring things and disappearing. It’s why we are able to freely discuss murder without the risk of someone finding out our plans; I’ve been using her runes.  
TT: I can see the path to the most favorable future. I receive visions of people who are important to me as well. Mostly you, John, and Jade. Sometimes a girl I have yet to meet.  
TG: and me?  
TT: You can time travel, Dave.  
TG: did your weird delphi powers tell you that  
TT: No. I’ve spoken to you.  


Well, fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lotta dialogue sorry. Worldbuilding was necessary for next chapter though (which will def feature a certain obnoxious angry boy)


	3. Burning

You slip in and out of consciousness, swimming through surreal landscapes like a fish from the sea to the sky. Breaking the waterline between the dream world and real world feels like coming up for air only to be forced back under by your own hand. A lot of what you overhear is curses. Not magical curses. Not like Rose. Just good old fashioned “Fuck”s and “Damn it”s.

“You’re burning up,” you hear.

“Jegus, what did you do?” you hear.

“Fucking idiot…” you hear.

And then everything real fades away to be replaced by black-and-white dreams of a land that almost stole you away. Rose’s words echo throughout your head. Derse-blood runs through your veins. You can feel it calling. Your homeland. Your origins.

You see a crow crumpled on messy bed sheets. You think you’re crying but you also think you’re dreaming. Somewhere, a shadow is approaching and your hands feel empty without a sword tucked firm against the rough edges of your fingers. Jade used to say you have the hands of an artist. She said that cameras and pencils belonged within your slender fingers and that nothing ever seemed as fitting as a record player beneath them.

Your mind scratches over the image of a broken record. Your shirt sliced in two with blood dripping down and spilling onto the rooftop. Does blood evaporate? Do people really die?

Was he gone? He was gone.

Was he? He has to be.

It was a long, long fall.

Is he gone?

You wake up gasping, hands already scrambling for your weapon, for a defense. The first thing you realize is that nobody is here. The second thing is that this is not your room. The final thing is that your sunglasses are neatly folded beside your head on a shelf and that your sword is nowhere to be found.

The door is unlocked and opens without a sound. You need to get out of here. You need to contact Rose. Where the fuck were you? You hug the walls as you slip down the hallway, careful to avoid creaking floorboards. The house you are in appears old, with a stained wallpaper that smells like mildew and vinegar and an arching ceiling that emits sounds that invoke aching joints in your mind.

Already, you are formulating a plan. Find a window. Climb down. If that doesn’t work, you can map your way to the front door. You’re sure you read somewhere that keeping your hand on the wall would take you through every room until you found the exit. Most importantly, remain unnoticed.

This plan is abruptly destroyed by a hand tapping on your shoulder. Instinct forces you to act and before you can stop to think or plan, you are already pivoting on your foot and shifting your weight to throw a punch at whoever is behind you. They dodge out of the way, stumbling backwards just in time for your fist to only swing through empty air. Your mind catches up to your body just as you take him in.

It’s the same boy from before and he does not look happy. You take a moment to memorize his face and take in his stance. Used to analysing your bro to figure out his next movement, you register the deep bags beneath his eyes. His hands are tucked into crumpled jeans and the folds of his sweater nearly consume him. He appears to hold no weapons and doesn’t move to attack you. You decide that the coast must be clear and it is still safe to duck out of this place as soon as possible. Your plan remains intact.

“I fucking told Kanaya we should lock the door,” he mutters, eyebrows drawn low as if they hold the weight of a storm on the edge of breaking. Something about the kid makes you think that his storms are entirely void of any rain and completely composed of crashing thunder and fire-starting lightning.

“Who the fuck are you and why the fuck did you kidnap me,” you say, careful to maintain a neutral face and to pick out any emotions that could seep in. You’re only slightly panicking, you think.

He bristles. Actually bristles. His teeth actually bare up at you and he raises a fist to shake in your face. 

“Who the fuck  _ am I? _ ” he asks, somehow outraged by your perfectly reasonable question. “I saved your sorry limp ass from dangling in Derse until you blew off the edge, douchebag. You might want to thank me for  _ saving your life. _ ”

“As far as I am aware, that never happened,” you respond before looking him up and down, “Where is my sword. Are you carrying it?”

“Oh my gog,” he says loudly, cradling his head in his arms as he looks wide eyed at you. You don’t appreciate the satirical tone dripping from his voice. “You’re a crazy person. We invited a crazy person into our home.”

“You didn’t fucking invite me. You kidnapped me.”

“ _ You fucker!  _ You would’ve  _ died _ !”

Part of you winces at how loud he is. Your internal clock is telling you it’s the middle of the night. This kid shouldn’t be awake, let alone screaming his head off in your face. He is shaking with rage now and you choose to step past him in favor of looking for an exit instead of listening to any more of his bullshit. He follows behind you, hand reaching to pull at your sleeve.

“Where,” he huffs, “do you think you’re going?”

You stop walking and shrug his hold off of you.

“Out of wherever this is. I’m not about to be harvested for organs by a weird cult.”

“You can’t do that,” he replies. “Also, we’re not a cult.”

“Fucking watch me. Also, there’s a ‘we’?” He doesn’t respond, instead pressing his lips into a stubborn line and glaring up at you. A part of you wants to let out a snort. To think you considered he might be dangerous. “Thanks for the save, I guess. I’m ducking out now though. Where’s the door? I can show myself out.”

A layer of urgency shades his voice now as he stumbles to walk ahead of you and push a hand against your chest. What is this kid’s problem?

“You can’t leave. It’s not safe. Derse might consume you.”

You roll your eyes and shoulder past him, taking long strides to outpace his short legs. He keeps up even though it’s obviously frustrating him to do so. Something between a snarl and a growl escapes him and you hold back a laugh in favor of swinging open a door. There’s a window on the wall opposite you and you cross the room to open it. His hand shoots forward to pull your wrist back from the window’s edge and wedge himself between you and the window as if he could block you from every exit.

“I can’t let you leave, assmunch!”

Finally, a smirk rolls onto your face. You use your height to your advantage to stare him down and shift your weight so that your many years of fighting become obvious. He nervously glances to the side but doesn’t back down. 

_ All thunder, no lightning _ . You think. This kid has no weapons and you’ve got plenty of experience to leave him unconscious.

“How are you going to stop me?”

Instead of wilting beneath your gaze, he returns your smirk, raising an eyebrow and tightening his hold on your wrist. He was either incredibly confident or incredibly stupid. Based on the situation, you were inclined to believe the latter.

But then he’s talking and he’s looking over your shoulder instead of in your eyes. You turn in time to see a girl and something must be wrong because her left eye doesn’t look right. The world shifts and it isn’t like slipping into Derse. Suddenly, you are surrounded by gold. An open sky unfolds above you, filled with flashes of images and a bright blue. The last thing you register is her wide grin and the boy’s words.

“I won’t, but she will.”

You slip back under and, for the second time in what must have been days, you fall into this boy’s arms, his thick sweater warm against your skin.

 

You wake up on a long comforter to a cackle by your ear. The aching headache squatting in the back of your brain like an ugly gremlin pulls out an axe to crash on the bone between your eyebrows as the laughter amplifies ten times over. In an instant, you are completely awake and looking into the bright red eyes of a girl with a smile several sizes wider than you are comfortable with.

“He’s awaaaake!” she calls out.

“Is he? Terezi, please refrain from leering over our guest.”

A clear and articulate voice registers from across the room and you realize that whoever these people are haven’t left you to wake up alone in an unguarded room this time. The girl — Terezi — pulls away as you prop yourself up on your elbows. You feign fatigue in case things get messy, taking it slow and exaggerating a yawn.

“I don’t feel much like a guest,” you drawl.

Another girl pulls into your eye line. Tall and slender, she carries herself like your brother’s katana tucked into a glass case. Part of you thinks “Danger,” and another part of you thinks, “Fuck, she’s hot.”

She smiles pleasantly at you as if she and her friends haven’t trapped you wherever you are. Kidnappers are weird.

“My apologies ah…” she blinks at you awkwardly for a beat.

Once you realize she is asking for your name, you pick the first thing you can come up with.

“Ben.”

What kind of idiot gives their name to their kidnappers?

“My apologies, Ben. I had hoped that Karkat would find you in better condition but you were on death’s door. I managed to resuscitate you before Derse could permanently claim you. Unfortunately, your long absence from consciousness has resulted in a large gap in your grasp of the situation. Karkat was going to explain everything.”

You feel naked without your sunglasses but maintain your straight face as best you can. She keeps talking about things you don’t understand, alluding to facts that you are missing and acting as if you should already know all of this.

“Dude, who is Karkat?”

The girl opens her mouth to respond but is interrupted by a gruff and familiar voice rasping from the doorway.

“That asshole would be me: the only sane one in this forsaken hellhole who had the sense to assign shifts to watch over the shit for brains with the self-preservation skills of the first lemming to take the leap.”

He enters the room, a storm with every step. Irritation flows off of him in waves but neither of the girls seem surprised or affected by it. The louder of the two girls leans forward and sniffs at you. The world flickers momentarily into a brighter realm and you feel nausea dip into you. There is a spiral mosaic cold against your skin. You find yourself sitting in the center of some sort of atrium. As quickly as it appeared, the gold folds away and you’re back on the cot and the boy — Karkat — is scowling down at you. Or not. His gaze seems fixated on the grinning redhead instead.

“Terezi, Kanaya  _ just  _ pulled this idiot out of Prospit. He isn’t stable yet.”

Her grin is all sharp angles. “No worries, Karkat. Kanaya is here to anchor him.”

Karkat tilts his head back dramatically in the most expressive eyeroll you’ve ever seen. Terezi watches with amusement plain on her face before reaching forward and pulling him close to lick along the side of his face. Like an offended cat, he nearly hisses while skittering backwards. So far all you’ve seen is a bunch of kids your age with no concept of how to act appropriately. Is everyone unattended here? Are there no adults in the building?

“You taste almost as guilty as the coolkid smells, Karkat!” Terezi exclaims, “You both absolutely reek of lies.”

Kanaya, who you assume is the tall chick, does not react to this interaction and focuses her attention on you. As she fiddles with the bedsheets and straightens out your rolled up sleeves, she hums slightly before speaking to you.

“Do you feel alright, Ben?”

“Ben…?” you ask before catching yourself, “Yeah, I feel fine. Thanks for asking, Weird Kidnapper.”

She huffs a laugh, her lips pulling upwards into a curve of a smile that show off the sharpest canines you’ve ever seen. Yep. Dangerous. Yep. Hot as hell.

Not noticing your fascination with her extremely sharp teeth, she finishes straightening your sleeve before shooting a glare over at Karkat and Terezi. Terezi is pulling out something from Karkat’s pockets while he squawks loudly and yells something about personal space.

“Jegus, Terezi! Being blind doesn’t mean you’re allowed to cross whatever lines you’d like! You’re blind to crosswalks not boundaries.”

When she snaps on the sunglasses Karkat had been carrying over her eyes, you think it’s about time to speak up.

“Hey, those are mine. Kidnappers  _ and _ thieves?”

“Shut up, shit for brains,” Karkat snaps. “I was going to give them back to you up until Terezi decided to pry them off me. Who even wears glasses indoors? You looked like a delinquent with something to hide and an ego too large to fit in the Empire State Building when I caught you stalking the halls like the shittiest spy in a heist movie with a bad soundtrack.”

Terezi seems to be having the time of her life in your glasses. She turns her head and her grin seems to grow even wider as she teases the loud one screeching about things you really don’t care about.

“Karkat, you’re only jealous because he’s a coolkid with coolkid glasses like mine.”

“Where  _ are _ your glasses, Terezi?” Kanaya pipes up.

The laughing and apparently blind girl whips out a pair of bright red glasses out of her back pocket exclaiming “Right here!” before snapping them onto the angry boy’s face. He scowls at her from behind them and looks ridiculous. You’re beginning to dismiss the idea that these dorks have kidnapped you.

“Now you are as cool as the new kid and I!” Terezi proclaims.

He wrenches them off and shoves them into Terezi’s hands before pulling your shades off of her face and then ushering her out the door.

“Out! Out! Out! I need to talk to this dumbass; you know how ridiculously dense some people can be about this bullshit spiel I have to go through.” He whirls to glare at Kanaya even though she’s been perfectly kind since you’ve met her. With a thumb pointing over his shoulder at the door he grunts, “Not that I’m not thrilled to have you here, but I think it’d be best if you got out too.”

She rises elegantly and reassuringly pats his arm as she passes, “Of course.”

You’re left with shouty boy. The boy made of storm. When he storms up to the side of your bed, he drags a chair away from a desk sidled up to the wall and plops it down by your side.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions but you’re going to sit there and listen because everything I’m about to say will be infinitely more informative than a fun Q&A session with the writers of the next up and coming TV show.”

“Can I have my glasses back?”

“What?” he shoots you a weird look before jumping in his seat, “Oh! Oh. Right. Sorry.”

You resist the urge to let out a sigh of relief when you slip the glasses back on. He takes a deep breath and you prepare yourself for the ‘bullshit spiel’ he mentioned. Based on the long diatribes he’s spilled out up until now, you’re pretty sure you’re in for a wild ride.

“We’re not kidnappers,” he states flatly. You raise a single eyebrow and obviously turn your head so that he can tell that you’re taking in the very prison-like conditions of your current circumstances.

He follows your gaze and scowls as he looks around the room. “Ok. It looks bad.”

“Yeah. It kinda does.”

“I swear you can leave once you’ve heard what I’ve got to say,” he answers, eyes boring into you with an unexpected intensity considering he probably can’t even pick out where you’re currently looking. You put some distance between the two of you by scooting so that you’re back is against the wall and cross your hands over your chest. A twinge of guilt picks at you as you rumple the previously immaculate sheets.

“Well, I’m listening.”

“I’m going to assume you know about Derse and Prospit since you were in Derse when I found you. I’m also going to assume you’re a complete idiot since you were about to literally lose yourself to Derse when I found you.”

“Who are you people? How did you even find me? I was literally smackdab in nowhereville on a rooftop that nobody ever looks up at.”

Karkat leans forward and you get the sense that maybe he does know where your eyes. Even with the shades between you two, the eye contact is nearly unbearable. Something about the way he says your “name” makes you pay attention.

“Ben. You almost died last week. I don’t know who taught you how to enter Derse, but we have experience and knowledge that could help you.”

“...died how?”

He settles back in his chair and suddenly he is all nerves, skitterish as if someone has taken a stroll across his grave. This is something he learned from experience. This is something that haunts him. You think of Rose and how devastated she would’ve been to find out that she’d sent you off to die.

“Derse…” Karkat starts, “has a pull that is very different from Prospit. It consumes people who are not careful.”

When his eyes reach yours again, your blood runs cold, “Particularly people who don’t want to be here.”

You stand up and nearly stumble over him with how close he is to the side of the bed. His arm shoots forward to steady you and you flashstep away on instinct.

“I have to go.” 

“Ben, wait,” Karkat says and it sounds like he’s pleading. Rose is on your mind. Rose and her stupid mom who won’t give straight answers when Rose needs straight answers. Rose who can’t wait to explore Derse. Rose who might be entering Derse right fucking now.

“My name’s not Ben,” is all you manage as you head towards the door. “I need my sword.”

“What the fuck? Wait!” Something like a frustrated scream and an aggressive growl erupts from Karkat. “ _ Let us fucking help you, you petulant piece of festering crap.” _

You stop. “My friend — my sister — she doesn’t know about the dangers of Derse. She might be trying to enter even now.”

“Ben- I mean- Whatever your name is…” Karkat is surprisingly calm despite how obviously annoyed he is with your panic as if you don’t have the right to worry about your goddamn sister. “She’ll be fine. I promise you we have people to save players about to fall into Derse. People like me.”

Relief floods you. You never used to worry this way, you think. You never used to really care. But Rose is important. Rose saved your life (even if it meant risking it in Derse.)

“Please,” Karkat says, “stay.”

You breathe in and square your shoulders. Information. You need information. And a place to stay. And help in general now that you think about it. You murdered someone last week apparently. You’ve been asleep in Derse for the last week apparently. You almost died apparently. Fuck.

“Ok.” You turn around and hold out a hand to the storm trapped within the skin of a boy who very much hates you yet insists that he has to save you from something you didn’t know you needed saving from. “My name’s Dave.”

On a whim, you make up a last name. You’ve never learned it having never seen any official records lying around the apartment amidst the clutter of swords and smuppets.

“Dave Strider. I need a place to stay and help with these cool new worlds I’ve discovered.”

He takes your hand and shakes it. His hands are clammy and warm.

“I’m Karkat Vantas. I can find a place for you and help you not die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this is certainly becoming something...


	4. Dorothy in California

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some p normie shenanigans. We get a taste of Derse. A taste of Terezi. A lil bit of Karkat.

It becomes quickly apparent to you that your previous assessment was correct. There are absolutely no adults in the house. After promising to set up shop for you, he ditched you in the guest room with a change of clothes and the command “Don’t leave the fucking house. You’re not in Houston anymore, Dorothy.” He didn’t stop to explain what he meant but the pleasant weather and tall palm trees you could see swaying through the window were indication enough to you that you were far from Texas.

You’re left pulling on the oversized sweater he left you. The jeans are too wide around the waist and short around the ankles so you loop the belt through it tightly and roll the jeans up so that they’re halfway up your shins. After assessing yourself in a mirror, you roll up the sleeves of the sweater too. With your old clothes in hand (crusted with blood and gross), you pull up the windowsill and swing a leg over the side.

The building is taller than you expected. A pipe runs up the side of it alongside the window but the moment you touch it, you know it will crumble as quickly as your will to live did the day you realized you were never going to survive to 18 for as long as you lived with Bro. The world outside the window smells of sea salt and freedom.

The house is positioned on a sloping hill. Granite boulders, tufts of tough grass, and thick bushes wound across the horizon but the area immediately surrounding the house is well kept with a greenhouse neighboring the house and chickens darting around the flower field fenced in by wire.

It’d be so easy to disappear in a place like this but that Karkat kid really did save your life apparently.

A message pops up in your eyeglass.

TT: Dave, I’d prefer it if you didn’t break your leg leaping from a window.  
TT: I will not enter Derse if that is what is worrying you.  


You sink to the floor of the room and knock your head against the wall. She was okay and she was so so smart. Smart enough to message you and smart enough to use her weird oracle visions to keep you from dying. You want to talk to Rose but the glasses don’t have a reply function so you’re stuck taking comfort from Rose’s long spiel.

TT: I am assuming you are far from a means of communicating to me right now.  
TT: To be honest, my image of you has been spotty. I’m not even sure if you are in possession of the glasses I gave you or if they were lost in your fight with your brother.  
TT: I suppose some part of me simply  
TT:  
TT: worries.  
TT: I hope you are well, Dave. I wish things had not been forced to play out as they have played out.  
TT: I’ve read through every book our ancestors have written on the subject of our Derse lineage.  
TT: There is so very little information. It is frustrating. With every bit of knowledge I gain though, my visions become even clearer.  
TT: I get senses now too. Peculiar impulses that urge me to perform specific things like message you when I’m halfway through finishing a scarf I am creating.  
TT: I have a feeling you are in need of a wardrobe?  
TT: This feeling is less based on magic and more on the understanding that you would hardly step foot back in your apartment once you broke free of the prison.  
TT: Don’t die on the streets of Houston anytime soon, Dave.  
TT: Or California.  
TT: It’d be a shame for you to fight for your life only to succumb to the elements.  
TT: I  
TT:  
TT: I’m glad you are okay, Dave.  


California.

You’re in California.

Rose stops messaging you and you feel yourself sinking into the unfamiliar situation you’ve found yourself stuck in. New house. New people. New state. New prison. You didn’t kill your brother to deal with this mess of powers dragging itself through the front door and plopping its sorry ass on your kitchen table, dirtying up the carpet and the tiles and mixing its gross decaying parallel dimension bullshit with the blood of your murdered brother.

Your murdered brother.

If you hadn’t gone through with it, you’d be home right now playing glitchy skateboard games and stuffing your face with a bag of the three month old Doritos you keep buried in the back of your closet. You’d kill for a cup of AJ. And maybe some clothes that actually fit. And maybe a part of you is terrified that Bro is actually still alive and about to bust into this dimension by carving a path from Derse to your room with his unbreakable sword. And maybe an even bigger part of you is terrified that Bro is actually dead. Mostly, you’re just terrified.

You push that down and down and down, pack it away into the recesses of your mind right next to the giant crush you had on Rose before you found out you were siblings. After wrestling all of that under control, you lurch to your feet and take in the room more properly.

Dusty bookshelves line the wall with books stacked haphazardly on them. Some precariously rest horizontally on the edges, one good earthquake away from toppling. Others are carefully arranged and touched often enough to lack a thin layer of dust to choke anyone who comes near.

The closet has the scribbles of a child on it, red marker paths crossing haphazardly with ugly gray handwriting that you can’t read. When you pull open the closet, moths fly out and bat into your face. You swipe them away from your cheek and pull open the top drawer to see sweater after sweater similar in designs to the one you’re wearing right now. Pants are folded neatly in the next drawer. Boxers decorated with little crabs and card symbols are in the upper right drawer and socks are jumbled into the last drawer. As you dig through the sweaters for any fun logos like “My grandpa went to Canada and all he got me was this crappy t-shirt,” you suddenly realize this is very likely the angry kid’s clothes you are digging through.

You push the drawer closed and decide to ditch the room. If this is going to be a long-term stay, maybe you can hang up some Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comics up to make the place a little more homey.

You exit into a long hallway, the same as the one you stalked through last night (a few nights ago?) All the doors are blank except for one with a sign that hangs off kilter and ajar. Painted in garish teals and reds are the words, “T3R3Z1’S ROOM.”

So that’s definitely crazy girl’s room.

As you pull your door shut, you realize a grey Cancer symbol has been painted onto it. Ha. 69.

Fuck, focus. You gotta find your sword and then a computer to contact Rose because you kind of really need to talk to her. You swing every door open and glance around quickly (but skip over Terezi’s room because there’s no way you’re approaching that mess unless it is your very last resort.)

At the end of the hall, stairs lead down to the bottom floor. You pass them to open the last door, a far more intricate door whose hinges do not squeak when you open them. 

The carpeting ends here at long wood panels. A large window looks out onto a front yard composed of nothing but rolling hills and a long staircase leading to a pseudodriveway. In the distance, you can see a road with cars passing by.

The place is impeccably clean. Beneath the window is a large oak desk. A computer sits on top of it but you realize within five seconds that it requires a password you don’t know. Instead of bothering to guess what Karkat’s fetish is, you shake through the drawers of the desk on the off chance that he just chucked your sword in here.

Maybe it’s years of getting the shit beat out of you. Maybe it was the step from carpet to hardwood floors. Something alerts you to someone else entering the room and you swing around before opening the last door.

It’s just the blind chick. Terezi. You stay stock still and take in her mismatched clothes and bright red glasses. There’s no way she can know you’re here as long as you don’t make a noise. It’s just dawning on you that you didn’t actually hear the cane she’s holding hit any furniture or sweep across the floor when she takes in a deep breath and cackles. Without any hesitation, she crosses the room and licks your face.

“You’ve got a delicious scent, Strider!”

“You’re weird as shit, blind girl.”

“I am indeed blind but I can taste and smell my surroundings. You reek of unappreciated coolness.”

“That’s cool.”

You edge away, fingers already reaching to pull the last drawer open. Before you can even touch the handle, her cane thunks against its side and she laughs and pushes the drawer firmly shut with a click.

“You won’t find your sword in there.”

Damn.

“Well where the fuck is it then.”

Terezi shrugs with a nonchalance part of you can’t afford to entertain. For all your composure, your hands feel empty without your sword within reach. For as long as you can recall, you’ve always had that thing nearby. It might feel like a weight at times but most days it was the key to making it out of close scrapes, the difference between a broken leg and a broken spine. Those aren’t great choices to entertain but you know which one you’ve managed to choose up until now.

As if in reply to your anxiety, Terezi shifts her attention to Karkat’s computer and punches in a log-in.

“Got any special girls to message, Dave?”

You answer without really thinking about it, already reaching forward to log onto the Pesterchum app that Karkat has displayed on his desktop.

“Me? Girls? I’m the king of bitches, blind girl. I’ll be walking down the street with one on each arm, just passing them out like cheap cigars at my son’s birth in the waiting room. Do you need a gal, Terezi? I can hook you up. I’ve just got a train of girls looking to be my number one forming a line out the door.”

You pause. Remember Rose’s chumhandle. Keep going.

“But a special girl to message? That’s the thing. None of them are that special. The secret to quantity is sacrificing quality and I resigned myself to a life without a special girl a long time ago.”

[TG] began pestering tentacleTherapist [TT] at 11:13 -- 

TG: ROSE WHATSUP  
TG: what the hell  
TG: what flavor of asshole leaves caps lock on  
TG: anyways  
TG: im mostly alright  


“Is this Rose girl not a special girl?” Terezi asks, leaning over your shoulder.

“Wait, you can read with your nose?”

She takes a sniff of your hair and you feel both confused and unsettled when she leers down at you and says, “I can smell your confusion. Also, you still haven’t answered my question.”

TG: didnt kill myself in california even though the place is obviously a hundred times worse than texas  


“Oh right. Yeah. Rose is real special, the kind of special you don’t forget. The kind of special who sends you handknit Eldritch horrors for Christmas and nags you to do your homework for the online classes you didn’t even tell her you were taking. Haven’t you heard of Rose? Rose Lalonde? She’s published like a thousand books. She has super special powers. She’s secretly a rogue agent of the FBI, on the run from the feds because she decided to rebel against unjust orders.”

Terezi frowns. “I am beginning to suspect you are lying to me about Rose as much as you lied to me about your name.”

TG: actually  
TG: i think ive liked my time in california a hundred times more than my time in texas  
TG: funny how freeing it is to find myself in a new place  
TG: im a new man rose  


“Ok. Fine. She’s my sister. Nothing special about her other than the fact that we share some genes which means she’s pretty damn special because I’m pretty special.”.

TG: california has changed me  
TG: im gonna buy a surfboard and catch some waves  
TG: youll find me chilling on a beach and hanging ten  
TG: and whatever else californians do  


“Californians are nothing like that!”

“Aren’t they though?”

TT: Why did I bother worrying about your health when I should have been preventing this disaster?  
TT: What culture will you be destroying next?  
TT: That of my people in the north?  
TT: Dave, I understand the darkness within you wants to grow your hair out and repeat phrases popularized long before you were born and adopt other characteristics of a stereotype but you must resist!  
TG: its too late rose  
TG: cowabunga  


Terezi laughs right next to your ear and you swear to god she must be lying about the whole being blind thing.

“Dave, I am not lying. I am simply a Seer of Mind and can access the part of my powers that allows me to sense my surroundings even when I am not within Prospit.”

“Oh.”

“I can also vaguely sense thoughts.”

“Oh.”

TT: I am assuming you are alright?  
TG: yeah everything is a-ok  
TG:   


You lean away from Terezi as she leans forward, sniffing loudly as if she can detect more of your suspicious thoughts and lies. God this girl is weird.

“Do you want a tour of the house?”

From the crazy blind girl who apparently can’t even see the house? Fuck yes.

TG: sorry gotta go rose  
TG: the blind girl who helped with kidnapping me but turns out to be pretty cool is giving me a tour of the house im staying at  
TT: What?  


\-- turntechGodhead [TG] ceased pestering tentacleTherapist[TT] at 11:57 -- 

TT: Unbelievable.

\-- tentacleTherapist [TT] ceased pestering turntechGodhead [TG] at 11:57 -- 

  
The house has a pretty simple layout despite its size. A central entrance leading to a living room splits outwards into two wings. The West Wing has a whole cluster of guest rooms. The East Wing is dominated by the kitchen, gaming room, and garage. Apparently Karkat had the gaming room installed to occupy Terezi and Vriska on busy days. You inwardly wonder who the hell this Vriska is but refrain from asking for elaboration. You find yourself perched on the edge of the kitchen counter as Terezi draws your profile in ketchup.

“So are there any adults living it up here? Cracking down on parties and making sure you do your homework? Mowing the lawn on Sunday and reading the morning paper? Adult things,” you ask, staring out at the greenhouse in the backyard. If you squint, you think you can make out the silhouette of a certain short boy who recently yelled at you about nearly dying. As if you asked him to save you.

Terezi shrugs, squirts some more ketchup on the corner of the plate, and stabs her finger down to doodle something resembling a circle that’s meant to resemble your sunglasses about a quarter of an inch higher than where she drew your face.

“No adults and, before you ask, I don’t want to go into it.”

“What, are y’all the boxcar children? You broke into some poor guy’s house while he was away and he just decided to up and leave you to it?”

“Are you a boxcar child, Dave? Running away from Texas carrying only a sword and a lot of lies? Should we be looking out for a parent who will come knocking down our door looking for a kid of slightly higher than average height and a much higher than average affinity for coolness?”

Well nobody gave a shit about you and your brother so you doubt they’ll give a shit about you now. You watch her paint a crooked line for your mouth and then cleverly change the conversation on her. Nice one, Dave. You’ve got this.

“Goddamn. That is the best piece of art that I’ve ever seen. Do you draw a lot?”

Terezi lets the conversation change slide and doesn’t even bat a blind eye at your question. 

“Do I?” she responds and, when she drags you up to her room to show off some of her best pieces, you find yourself loving her shitty doodles.

  
It’s early morning. Break of dawn level morning. Edging into the wee hours of the night morning. You’re wide awake of course. This is usually when you took your shower back uh. Home. Or. Back in Texas. A week of chilling with the resident crazy girl hasn’t made you any less on edge when you’re alone in a room and the shadows seem to twitch in your peripheral vision. 

Terezi likes to sleep in until about 7 ish so you’ve got a few hours to kill. You spend them sifting through the clothes you’ve kind of inherited from Karkat. He’s got a lot of the same grey sweater but you like to switch things up by wearing the sweaters he’s shoved in the back, obviously gifts he didn’t entirely appreciate. You dig up a Christmas sweater with a llama cross-stitched on the front and feel a smile pull at your lips. Fuckin jackpot.

With your wardrobe settled you ease yourself into the hall, careful not to make any noise since this house has about a billion kids around every corner. (That’s a lie, it’s just Terezi, Karkat, Kanaya, Vriska, and you.)

In what is the smartest move of the century, you hop onto the stairs banister and slide to the bottom. When it comes to ninjaing around a house, you are king. Adding to the fun are your socks sliding over the tiles. You slip into the kitchen without making a sound and feel damn proud of yourself for it. You stop internally talking yourself up when you find yourself face to face with the pissy benefactor who seems to begrudgingly tolerate your presence in his home.

He’s crunching on some sugary cereal and narrows his eyes at you as you just stand stock still. After a moment, he rasps out a pointed question, “Is that sweater actually mine?”

You roll your shoulders back in a sort of shrug and then slide on over to the cabinets to find a bowl. Once you’ve pulled one out and plopped your skinny ass down in the chair beside him. You swivel it around a few times before finally dragging it to a stop in front of the counter and begin pouring yourself a bowl of Oh’s.

“Found it in the back of your closet. It was love at first sight when I caught sight of the Christmas Llama himself, a mythological creature known for trampling the sad children who weren’t altogether naughty but didn’t quite make the nice list.”

“I get a headache everytime you speak.”

You watch as he picks apart his cereal, moving it from side to side across the bowl. It looks like he’s barely touched the stuff since pouring the bowl out.

“Dude,” you say, “What are you doing to your cereal.”

He jolts in his seat and his face turns red. The spoon clatters against the side of the porcelain bowl and little whirlpools form in the milk where the spoon nearly submerges itself under. The pour spoon’s attempt to drown itself is thwarted by Karkat’s quick grab at it.

“I- I like my cereal soggy. And it’s none of your fucking business what I do with my food and how I eat it or how long it takes me to eat it.”

He’s annoyed that you asked him about his cereal. What a guy. With a slight nod of acknowledgement towards his angry tirade, you put your spoon to the side and pick up the bowl to slurp up the last of your milk. When you finish, Karkat is looking at you as if you are a dead rat that a cat brought to him. Whatever his opinion of you is, you don’t particularly care. The guy lets Vriska stay in his house and, from what you’ve seen, he likes her a lot less than he likes you.

You wave a little as you stand to leave.

“Later.”

When you push yourself off the table and slide backwards away from him, Karkat rolls his eyes before returning his attention to swirling his cereal around. What a guy.

  
An hour or so later, you’re flipping through the books in your room (a lot of trashy romances) when Terezi nearly breaks the door down with deafening knocks. 

“Dave! I’m bored of hanging out here; we’re heading out today!” Terezi yells through the door. You pull it open and catch her midway through another knock.

“Sounds good except the only shoes I have are caked with blood.”

Like a true samaritan, Terezi chooses not to question you about it like she did on your first day. You suspect Karkat and her may be trading details on you but you don’t actually want to find out for sure. Instead of asking you about your shoes, Terezi pulls open Karkat’s closet and chucks a pair of sandals at you.

“Try these on.”

Flip flops.

You try them on and they fit alright. Terezi grins down at their awful bright red plastic and the oddly shaped nail polish stain on one of the straps before making eye contact (as best as she can what with being blind) with you and announcing that you are now a true Californian. Your only possible response is, of course, “Cowabunga.”

  
You head out to find Kanaya at Terezi’s command. In the hall, Karkat is unlocking the door across from yours. You stop and watch as he and Terezi share a series of looks and expressions in a way that suggests that they’re talking about you without talking about you. It’s kind of impressive given Terezi isn’t always looking right at Karkat albeit awkward as hell because you’re standing right there. Eventually, Karkat’s shoulders sag and he throws his hands up in resignation before marching into the room. You get a peak of the inside: a neatly cleaned bed and a bookcase pushed against the wall.

“Karkat’s room is here?”

“Yeah. He practically lives in the study though because of his insomnia.” Well that explains his bad attitude and early breakfast hours.

“What’s a guy like Karkat even do outside of dragging helpless idiots off of rooftops and out of Derse?”

Terezi shrugs and starts making her way down the hall to another room, dragging you along as she explains.

“He works a lot of weird hours. Rewatches sappy movies. Twiddles his thumbs. Let’s go before Kanaya leaves for her morning class.”

Kanaya’s door is a few doors down from Karkat’s. When Terezi barges in, Kanaya doesn’t bat an eye. You stay outside the door frame, imagining an invisible divide between her room and the hallway. When she shoots you a look, you think she’s staring straight down into your soul and you wonder if it is as dark and blotchy as Bro’s would be. But she smiles at Terezi’s request and doesn’t bother questioning you.

With a wave of her hand and an eloquent, “Hold your breath,” she sends you to Terezi’s destination. The teleportation is instantaneous and leaves you nauseous. Dust flies up from where you were standing when you displace a billion air molecules and you’re left coughing into your hand. The nausea is enough to make you want to pass out.

Terezi laughs near your ear. “I forgot that you were unconscious the last time you were teleported!”

She claps you on the back, which only makes you cough harder. After you finish hacking up a lung, she pulls you out of the backroom you appearified in and you find yourself standing behind the counter of a small record store. Outside, cars streak past on the busy street. The only person in the store, who you assume is managing the place, is tall and lanky with an overbite that could kill. He kind of looks like a dork with his red and blue lensed glasses perched on his pointy nose but you can’t exactly judge him because he’s got the gig of a lifetime if he owns this record store.

“Holy shit, Terezi. I told you to text before you stop by.”

The guy’s got a lisp and you can’t help but crack a remark.

“Look at us. A trio of dicks with shitty eyewear.” 

In another lifetime, you could’ve been friends. He sends you a scathing glare that suggests he’s heard about you though and they weren’t the best of reviews. Maybe Karkat works here or something. Terezi did mention a lot of part time jobs.

“The only dick with shitty eyewear here is you,” the kid lisps out and then holds out his hand, “I’m Sollux. If you’re going to stay here, I’m forcing you both to help sort these records out.”

Is his name Thollukth or Sollux? You look towards Terezi as she pulls up records and sniffs out their titles. How bad (funny) would it be if she licked one of them?

You take two-eyed kid’s hand like the great guy that you are and give it a firm shake. In the last week, you’ve had your hand-shaking virginity taken twice. At this rate, you’ll be a deal-making pro.

“Dave Strider. What’ve you got here?”

Thollukth/Sollux pulls out a record and blows the dust off of it. The label reads “Aradia Megido - Vol. 2” You’ve never heard the name before but he puts the disc into the section for alternative music under M.

“Most of the records were Aradia’s and she said she doesn’t care if I let people listen to them so we’re putting them out into the store.”

“Let’s give them a whirl, Sollux,” Terezi pulls a disc out with a triumphant grin. Instead of working on any kind of organization, the three of you load up on records and slip into a listening booth. You’re halfway through the first volume of Aradia’s songs, a dark and repetitive soundtrack with new motifs added in every cycle, when you glance over and see Sollux shrugging awkwardly. He glares off his shoullder before slouching in his chair. Maybe the guy is insane. When you refocus on the music, you let your ear follow along with the metronome, hands tapping at your side. The pattern in the music isn’t easily tracked at first but there’s several different rhythms interlocking to make one. Everything happens on time and, once you make sense of it, all the chaos is predictable.

You like it. It reminds you of home. The parts of home that you actually liked. The first time you learned to mix music was the first time you had received an unexpected kindness from your brother. You can still remember how he’d guided you through the steps. His voice was deadpan but you think it was one of the crafts he was as proud of refining as his wall of irony.

Afterwards, he’d left you alone to make your own music for a week. A full week without any beatdowns on the roof or doors breaking down in the night. Your brain had screamed at you at every moment to prepare for the next strife but the pins and needles of anxiety stabbing at your stomach had faded when you slipped on your headphones and listened to what you were creating.

Maybe it was the same for your brother. You don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing to you. Were you always like him or did he make you this way?

Images of the blood slick on your sword push into your brain. Murderer. Murderer. Murderer. Beside you, Terezi shifts uncomfortably in her chair before switching out the record for a Beatles song. You focus on shoving your thoughts away from sight. Maybe you’re worse than your brother. Distantly, the lyrics of Hey Jude filter into your mind and they become the life raft you cling onto in the face of the never-ending torrent of uncomfortable things swirling through your head. Sollux throws another life raft at you.

“Dave, Karkat told me a lot about you last time he was here.”

“Yeah, I figured. A helluvalot of complaints, right? I swear that guy can really go off on the smallest of details. He harped at me for noticing how he takes his cereal and insists that he’s going to kick me out of his house at any second while simultaneously saying it isn’t safe for me to be off on my own dunking into Derse like an idiot with a death wish.”

“Karkat’s a cantankerous piece of shit but give him a chance and he’ll - fuck - speak of the Devil.”

You follow Sollux’s gaze but all there is behind you is the wooden wall of the booth. Sollux exits the recording booth and you follow without hesitation. Outside the glassfront of the store, Karkat is stalking up the street, a glower on his face and his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his sweater. Above, in the sky, you imagine thunderheads building up. You swear this kid always looks like he’s always one wrong word away from breaking into a shitstorm. Karkat jerks the door open and looks right past you towards Terezi.

“He shouldn’t be here.”

“Sorry, Mom,” you pipe up before you can stop yourself. “I didn’t know I was grounded.”

“You shut up,” he barks without even looking away from Terezi, “This is dangerous. What would you have done if he was dragged back in?”

Terezi shrugs before looking down at her watch.

“Forty-five minutes Karkat. It took 45 minutes for you to get here without prompting.”

“Forty-five minutes is all it takes, Terezi! That’s enough time for me to shit out a screenplay and feed it to you and then have you shit that shit out and then ferment the shit to make the worst moonshine to ever grace this planet and then drink that fucked up moonshine and get so drunk that I lose 20 IQ points and decide to do exactly what you’ve done and take Mr. ‘My-Name-Is-Ben-But-Not-Really’ away from the house, his only source of his stability!”

Terezi wrinkles her nose at Karkat’s awful imagery as if she can smell the crap moonshine on his breath. Reaching forward blindly, she palms his shoulder in an awkward and patronizing pat.

“It’s alright, Karkat. You don’t have all of the information anymore.”

“I heard enough from Kanaya, Terezi. I can’t believe she just let you drag him off. I really need to educate her on the instability that surrounds new dreamers. God, I’m so fucking dumb to have waited until Dave bumbled along. We have enough problems with his ass-backwards way of thinking threatening to pull him back in at any moment, let alone with an uneducated Space dreamer just waltzing around the house and whisking you away at the drop of a hat. But you should know better Terezi!”

Rather than interrupt his spiel, Terezi seems to resign herself to listening to his ramble. You and Sollux slip back into the sound booth as Karkat continues and start playing a song.

With Megido’s mellow beats filling the room, you slip backwards and lean against a wall. Real casual, you nod towards the record and ask him, “So who’s this girl anyways? I’ve never heard her before.”

Sollux snorts and his canines glint at you, sharper than you think most people’s teeth are. A flash of a cutting grin and an eye with more pupils than there should be blinks into your head. Who was that girl? You can feel your thoughts polluting up your brain again and clear it quickly to focus in on what Sollux is talking about. It’s weird how easy it’s become to just ignore his lisp now that you’ve hung out with him awhile.

“She’s my dead best friend who is still haunting me in Derse.”

“WHat.” Dead best friend. Haunting. Derse. Not a great combination. Actually, a really bad combination. Your hand curls at your side and you are dragged stumbling backwards into Derse. Your foot slips slightly on the edge of the end of the goddamn entire world and you cannot breathe. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The sky above you is a spiral of purple. Even as you take in the way the shadows are twisting as strange birds circle above your head, all you can really see is his shadow slipping over the edge, his mouth set in stone, still refusing to make a noise of pain until the last second. Dead best friend. Haunting.

And then your vision clears. You see a girl with dark hair tossed over her shoulder, strands of it lifting as if gravity does not hold her. She floats towards you, eyes a pale white and wide with curiosity. When she opens her mouth to say something, everything snaps back into place. You feel a hand buried into your sleeve and glance over to see Karkat glaring at Terezi from where he’s standing. You start to pull away but his hold only tightens.

“I’m the only thing keeping you from tumbling right off into the land of sleep without an alarm to wake you up, Dave. I wouldn’t shrug me off so eagerly if I were you because if I were you and you were me then you would know that you are not particularly happy about your current circumstances and the stupidity of boys who seem to think it’s alright to just ditz into Derse whenever they feel like it. You would also know that being trapped in Derse for eternity isn’t particularly fun and you definitely wouldn’t want to deal with disposing of my sleeping body.”

Your head is still spinning so you only understand about half of what he says. Sollux has his head cocked to the side and you remember the girl you saw in Derse. Aradia Megido. A ghost whispering to the guy in front of you.

“What triggered it?” Sollux asks.

”You shrug as much as you can with Karkat’s hand firmly clamped around your arm. “Dunno. So are you hanging with us now?”

The last question is pointed at Karkat. His hold on your arm tightens a little more as if in punishment for somehow forcing him to be here. He doesn’t look at you. You’d swear the guy is sulking at the thought of being in your presence.

“I guess,” he sighs. Terezi laughs. Sollux plays another record. It’s an alright time.

  
Hours later, Terezi drags you out onto the street while Karkat helps Sollux close shop. After Karkat says goodbye to Sollux (“See you later, asshole.” “Takes one to know one, KK.” “Not denying that.”), he shoves his hands deep into his sweater pockets and follows behind you and Terezi as she loops her arm into the bend of your elbow and walks you down the street.

She “points out” the sights of California, describing the fire hydrant paces away from the bench as “A regular old Californian bench,” and the dog next to the fire hydrant as, “A deliciously red fire hydrant.”

Karkat’s pace quickens and, within a few strides, he’s walking alongside you two. Terezi good-naturedly squeezes an arm through his elbow and releases her hold on you and he tilts his head to let her talk into his ear.

“Terezi, where are we going.”

Terezi nods up towards your general direction. “Gotta get the coolkid his own outfits since all he’s been wearing are your oversized hoodies and rolled up jeans. He always smells like a weird mix of your special cherry detergent and the dust of Derse.” Huh. You hadn’t realized Terezi used her smell to identify people. You look down at the line of reindeers cross-stitched right above the crook of your elbow. It’s a good look. Maybe you’ll just steal this sweater. Karkat won’t mind.

“You’ve gotta admit that I’ve made this style my own.”

Karkat snorts and rolls his own, “Dave, you don’t have any style to call your own.”

“These are your clothes, man.”

“I haven’t worn that sweater since the Christmas Terezi gave it to me. Even then, I only wore it to subdue her since she seemed intent on forcing me to wear the most garish things possible that year.”

You let their bickering wash over you as Terezi responds, “You look good in red, Karkat!”

It’s the first time you’ve actually been out with people. You barely know these two but you feel more at ease strolling down the streets of California with them than you ever did creeping furtively from your bedroom to the bathroom across the hall with Cal’s eyes drilling into the back of your head from some dark corner you didn’t check.

Across the street, you think you see a homeless guy peeing into a succulent nestled between the dusty stones decorating the street.

Ahead of you, Terezi and Karkat continue arguing before Terezi abruptly pulls to a stop in front of a bright red door. When you look through the window, you see rows and rows of clothes hanging from long silver poles. The place is pretty big but the wall of mirrors on the far left side only makes it appear even bigger.

“Who exactly is paying for this?” Karkat grumbles as you all enter. Terezi pokes his side with a sharp finger and he winces.

“You are with your billion part-time jobs and inheritance the size of Mt. Everest!”

It’s a thrift store. A few other teenagers are browsing through the t-shirts shoved up on the far side of the store with a bright yellow sign declaring “Only 2 bucks!” while middle-aged women walk up and down the aisles sifting through the hangers in search of the perfect new addition to their outfits. Terezi grabs a bright, purple-feathered boa hanging off the wall beside the door and wraps it around Karkat.

“You could do with a makeover too, Karkat.”

Karkat wrestles the feather boa off of him and tosses it on top of a nearby shelf. While he huffs and puffs on his own, Terezi fingers a pair of sunglasses before forcing them onto your nose on top of your beloved shades.

“Woah, Terezi. I know I’ve taken to remixing Karkat’s style but the shades are not about to be replaced.”

“Well, what is your style then, Strider?”

You look around the store at the endless amount of combinations available. Nearby, a shoe rack collapses as one of the other kids that were hanging out here accidentally knocks into it. Straight-faced and serious, you turn to Terezi and curl your arm around her shoulder before waving your hand in a wide arc.

“Try on an outfit and guess.”

She grabs Karkat’s wrist and takes on your challenge, leaving you to browse through the place for a pair of shoes.

This is good. This is actually better than good. Being around people isn’t so hard when they don’t carry swords around the house and shove smuppets at you at every spare moment. 

Around 15 minutes later, Terezi finds you lost in a pile of shoes trying to sort out the pairs that go together. You follow her to the changing rooms and she pops in and out. With a bright smile and a “Ta-da!”, Terezi spreads her arms wide and spins to show off a garish orange t-shirt with the Rugrats logo on the front of it tucked into bright purple skinny jeans cuffed at the bottom. It’s hard not to laugh when you realize she’s topped it all off with a pair of ridiculous pink sunglasses and bright red shoes. 

“Goddamn, Terezi. You’ve got me pegged. Those color choices are really where it’s at. It’s like I’m staring into the canvas of an abstract artist and all I can see within the blotches of orange and purple is my own soul reflected back at me. The tears are welling up within my itty bitty heart as I realize that this is truly who I am. Terezi, I’m crying right now. Sweating buckets from my eyes. You’re wearing a masterpiece.”

“But wait!” Terezi declares. “There’s more!”

Suddenly she’s gliding across the floor with what must be heelys and nearly crashes straight into you. Right as you catch her elbow and swivel her so that she can stand beside you, one of the doors of the fitting rooms crash open. Karkat steps out and glares you down.

“I give you: urban douchebag.”

At a glance, you think you’d actually wear this outfit but then the details sink in. He’s wearing a grey flannel on top of a t-shirt declaring, “whatever.” Rather than just leaving it at that though, he grabbed a second red flannel and tied that around his waist to hang down straight into the fucking black cowboy boots he somehow found in the shoe section while you weren’t paying attention. An oversized pair of sunglasses slip down his nose, slightly too wide for his head. You think they might be bejeweled at the corners with black rhinestones but you can’t tell at this distance.

“Dude,” you ask, “Is that a girl’s shirt?”

Karkat screeches. “Clothes have no gender, Dave!”

“Fuck yes. I’ll buy it.”

With a new t-shirt and pair of shoes in toll, Karkat shoots a message to Kanaya asking when it’d be most convenient for her to teleport you home. Within a second, you find yourselves whisked away.

Karkat and Terezi brush themselves off as if it’s easy but waves of nausea roll over you and you find yourself sinking down onto the cool kitchen tiles. Distantly, over your head, Karkat mutters “Fuck” before pulling you up with rough hands and easing you into one of the chairs by the kitchen counters. He shoves a glass of cool water into your hands.

“It’ll get better.”

The next wave of nausea is not as reassuring as his words and you roll your head forward and lean it against the cool counter. A few minutes later, the spell lifts and you can take in the smell of something toasting on the stove. You take the moment to rest your eyes even though your sunglasses are uncomfortably pricking into your face. A plate clatters beside your head and you look up to see a grilled cheese sandwich with basil and tomatoes oozing from the sides.

“Is there any AJ in this house?”

Karkat slides a juicebox across the counter to you. “I got a bunch of these juiceboxes after you complained like thirty times.”

“Karkat Vantas, you are a blessing.”

“Whatever.”

  
You lie awake that night and watch the shadows elongate across your ceiling. Beneath your heavy bedsheets, your body goes through the motions of the stretches you used to do when it had been awhile since Bro last strifed with you. (Abused you, your mind supplies.)

On the floor is a pair of used converse shoes and a crumpled t-shirt. When you turn to stare down at them, you think things aren’t too bad. This is good. This is actually better than good. You fall asleep to images of Derse’s sky swirling above you and record spinning and spinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took so long to update because I was making my outline of the whole novel! The whole story is done and planned now, I just have to write it out. Thank you for reading if you're reading this!


	5. Roses in the Snow

Your legs are propped up against the side of the bed as you stare up at the dizzying amounts of red and orange paint splattered on the ceiling in messy spirals and swirls. The fan above you is rotating slowly and you track the places where she must have accidentally (or maybe not so accidentally) splashed paint onto it. The little bit of red you’re currently following with your eyes looks a little like a misshapen rabbit.

While you track the little rabbit, you’re simultaneously tossing a baseball you found up and down and trying to see how long you can keep it up.

Up on the bed, Terezi is scrawling an ugly profile of you onto her wall painted over with black chalkboard paint and labelling it in big crooked letters, “3Y3 W1TN3SS.” You’ve just seen a murder and you’re about to step up to the plate and point fingers at the accused.

With a booming voice, Terezi introduces you to the jury.

“I’d like to introduce to the stand Mrs. Maywell, the inconsolable wife of the victim and witness to this murder! Are you prepared to respond to all of my questions honestly?”

You try your best to pitch your voice ridiculously high while keeping it void of any emotion. For fun, you emphasize your Southern accent a lot more.

“Lord… I don’t reckon I have the heart to relive these events but my husband, uh-”

“Mr. Ben Maywell,” Terezi helpfully supplies between giggles.

“...Ben would want me to pull strength from my faith to introduce to y’all the true and complete story.”

“Evelyn,” Terezi’s tone becomes mock serious as she finishes coloring in your hair with white chalk, “Can you recount to the jury exactly how you saw the murder?”

“Well, I came home and I heard a bit of tusslin’ in the kitchen so I sidled on down the hallway as quiet as I could. Benedict normally likes to spend his evenin’s with his feet propped up on the ottoman watchin’ the news so I knew somethin’ was up.”

“Did you call the police, Mrs. Maywell?”

“I don’t recall… I must have at some point. Knowing me, I probably gave them a ring as soon as I heard the uproar…” You internally weigh the pros and cons of making your voice waver a little to really sell the character.

“That’s all well and good, Mrs. Maywell. But why don’t you tell us about these offshore accounts you have been funneling money towards for years! You claim to have seen this man kill your husband but he has presented a very reliable alibi. Explain yourself!”

“I-” You break away from character. “Wait I thought you were my lawyer.”

“Justice must prevail regardless of my position, Dave!”

“You’re going to be a great lawyer, Terezi.”

You toss the ball a little too high and it knocks against the fan. You both hold your breaths as the fan spins off kilter for a few moments before righting itself.

“Dave, you’ve committed a grave offense!” Terezi announces. She pulls the baseball out of your hands despite your protests and then drops a dragon plush torn down its side into your hands and points you towards the shelf where needle and thread sit. “Your punishment is community service!”

You roll over on the floor and stretch to reach the thread. The spool drops onto the floor beside your head, dragging the needle with it. Unfortunately, you’re forced to sit up to fix up Terezi’s broken toy.

“What even makes you think I can sew this shit up nicely?” you grumble.

Terezi doesn’t look away from her drawing and uses her left arm to point vaguely in your direction.

“You wore shorter sleeves than normal today, Dave.”

You look down at your arms and you immediately realize what she’s referring to: a scratch down your shoulder that you had to sew up yourself a few years ago. It didn’t heal neatly but the stitches did their job. Rose had walked you through it under the impression that you tore up some jeans, not your fucking shoulder.

Your blood runs cold and you pull the last stitch through on the toy before tying it off.

“Wow, it’s like ten o’clock. You hungry? I’m hungry. I’ll grab you something.”

You leap off the ground before Terezi can protest and are already turning through the door and into the hall by the time she’s speaking up to tell you she doesn’t actually want any food.

As soon as you’ve turned the corner into the hallway that leads to the staircase, your hand reaches for the hilt of your sword for comfort. You insisted on its return to you and Terezi backed you up, brandishing her own weird swords as evidence that Derse and Prospit are dangerous. (God, she’s cool.)

Karkat had relented when Terezi said he couldn’t just steal from every psycho that landed in Derse or Prospit and you’ve breathed easier ever since. Not because you’re safe from the dangers of Derse though. The reminder that you’re safe doesn’t always entirely stick.

Bro is dead. You tell yourself this everyday.

You killed him. You avoid thinking about this everyday.

Even as you find yourself reaching for your sword less often and focusing more on the things people say than the way they stand, you don’t think you’ll ever truly feel that your invincible brother has fallen.

It’s been an uneventful month in the Vantas household composed of easy living that you’ve never known before. The storm boy himself who owns the place rarely shows face long enough to talk to you much about Prospit and Derse but you’ve managed to pull out of him details on Derse that your ancestors must have deemed too stupid and obvious to include in their writings.

According to Karkat, who had the benefit of a sober dad to teach him about this shit, new dreamers are always a little unstable for a few months after contacting their respective planes. The Vantas house was built with a mix of “Space” and “Blood” magic to help stabilize and tie people on this plane.

It was a lot of jargon to parse through but what you inferred from it was that Karkat was particularly clingy after you’ve fallen into Derse because the physical contact with him (a blood or space dreamer?) allowed him to keep you tied here.

You stop by your room and pull on a thick sweater before heading out again. When you reach the staircase down to the first floor, you hop onto the banister and let gravity do the work for your legs.

You’ve talked about it a bit with Rose through Pesterchum when Karkat’s out at one of his jobs and she’s tried to teach you about the fuckton of classes and aspects your mom has books and research on. Unfortunately, lots of the pages pertaining to new dreamers are stained with wine or written in cyphers Rose has to struggle to crack. (You’re of absolutely no use when it comes to decrypting things.)

You slip into the kitchen to find a plate of pancakes on the counter, saran wrap covering it to keep the flies out. A post-it note reads in Karkat’s loud and spiky handwriting, “FOOD FOR THOUGHT, HOW ABOUT YOU ASSHOLES DO THE DISHES WHILE I’M AT THE GROCERY STORE. IT’S THE LEAST YOU CAN DO FOR LIVING HERE FOR FREE.”

There’s a longer rant on the back about freeloaders but you crumple it up and Kobe it into the nearest recycling bin before looking through the cupboards for some maple syrup. If there’s anything you’ve learned from living her a month, it’s that Karkat Vantas loves cooking and he always keeps the place stocked with food.

That doesn’t entirely stop you from shoving bags of chips into the bottom of your wardrobe though and you pull out the box of peanut butter crackers Karkat bought and make a mental note to steal some away later.

The guy does do a pretty good job of managing the household. He refuses to talk about how he inherited the shitshow but Terezi has alluded to a family tragedy that resulted in her blindness and Karkat’s dad’s disappearance. You don’t think too much into it and spend a portion of your days doing some of the chores around the place when Karkat’s gone.

He had to teach you how to use a broom and wash dishes but damn can you clean places now.

Glancing over at the pretty high stack of dishes precariously leaning over each other in the sink, you resolve to maybe actually do what Karkat asked and call up to the second floor, “Terezi, come down and eat! I’ve gotta do the dishes before Karkat returns!”

“I said I wasn’t hungry…” Terezi grumbles but stomps down the stairs anyways.

While you do the dishes, Terezi drenches her pancakes in a disgusting amount of syrup and blueberries.

The first time you ran the dishwasher, you just dumped the dishwashing soap in (because soap is fucking soap, Karkat. How was I supposed to know that one is for wiping and the other’s for spraying?) and the result had been a disaster made of soapsuds two feet high. Karkat had been unamused even though Terezi and you had thought it was a revolutionary way to make snow. As punishment, you had to do the dishes for a week and the only person who helped you was Kanaya because Karkat didn’t have the heart to scold her for helping “the scum who fucked up washing the dishes because he couldn’t read a goddamn label.”

“Check it, Terezi,” you say, “I bet I can get through these dishes within twenty minutes. My days of struggling to figure out the difference between handsoap, dishwashing soap, and dishwasher soap are over.”

You show off the labels Karkat helpfully added to the three soaps loudly declaring their purposes so that your small, peanut brain can handle using different soaps for different things. He’s called you every form of an insult there is under the moon and Sun but doesn’t seem to get that you find it hilarious.

Obviously recalling your struggles with cleaning machines, Terezi responds with a pointed question that sets you on edge all over again.

“Your guardian wasn’t very good at house upkeep, were they?”

Your hands still midswipe across a greasy pan.

“No,” you hear yourself saying. “He wasn’t.”

Terezi’s fork clatters onto the counter. “Go and grab Karkat. He’s just pulled into the driveway. Kanaya and I will meet you in the front yard.”

She’s already pushing away from the table while you wipe off the grease and soapsuds from your hands.

“Wait, Terezi, what!” you call out towards her.

“It’s important, Dave! Lives hang in the balance!”

You can’t figure out whether or not she’s doing her weird drama thing where she acts as though it’s the end of the world if you break the law. Rather than internally debating it though, you take her word for it and shoot outside. Down at the bottom of the hill, Karkat is already pulling into his normal parking space.

You take the stairs two at a time before thinking better of it and hopping onto the banister and sliding all the way down, nearly tumbling off halfway down because the banister is thinner for these stairs than the ones in the house.

Karkat is scowling at you as he wrestles with a plastic bag filled with groceries.

“Finally decide to be useful, Dave? I hope you did the di-”

“No time,” you cut him off and grab his wrist to pull the groceries off of them, “Terezi said she needs to talk to you.”

Karkat’s indignant splutters die off as soon as you mention Terezi and he drops the bags on the ground to start sprinting up the staircase. You go to follow him when a wave of nausea hits you and suddenly you’re crouched on the front yard about to puke your guts out.

Kanaya’s cool hand pats your cheek reassuringly as she pulls you up.

“Sorry, Dave,” she murmurs, “Time is of the essence.”

“What,” you turn to look up at Terezi and Karkat, pinning them both with a glare, “the fuck is going on.”

“We’ll explain later,” Karkat says as Terezi pushes past him to say an address to Kanaya. For some reason, it rings a bell. Some place in New York...

“Wait. Wait. Wait.” You tug at Karkat’s sleeve before he can teleport away. “That’s Rose’s house. What the fuck. What’s wrong with Rose?”

Karkat rolls his eyes, “You know that time when I saved your life? It’s that but with someone else.”

He cuts you off before you can interject, “We don’t know for sure that it’s Rose!”

“That’s her fucking house, Karkat. I’m coming with you. She’s my sister.” 

Karkat narrows his eyes at you. “I’m not bringing a newbie with me to Derse, Dave.”

“Don’t act all high and mighty, Karkat! I know you’ve only been in Derse when I was flickering back and forth between these two smarmy planes. I’m better equipped for Derse and, need I remind you, Rose is my goddamn sister.”

“Dave, this isn’t fucking negotiable. I’ve been trained for this. You haven’t.”

Terezi breaks into the argument, “We don’t have time for this, you idiots! Kanaya just send them both. Karkat, if Dave dies, that’s not on you.”

Karkat whirls with a snarl to face Terezi, “You know that-”

The nausea isn’t as bad as the first time.

  
You steady yourself on the bar stool you’ve appearified next to before taking in your surroundings, already cataloguing the different points at which you’d have an advantage in a fight because the adrenaline coursing through you is screaming that danger is around the corner.

You’re in a small room with a long bar. Scattered across the floor is broken glass from a vodka bottle that toppled from a collapsed shelf stocked to the top with alcohol.

Sitting calmly on one of the seats with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes shut closed is Rose. Her face is damp with sweat and a bead of it trickles down the side of her head when your eyes land on her.

“Oh my god, Rose,” you mutter. And then to Karkat, “Is she in the same danger I was?” 

“No…” Karkat mumbles.

You step forward to shake her out of it when Karkat wraps a hand in the back of your hood and pulls you back. “Not so fast, Dave. Your sister isn’t the one in danger right now.”

“What…” your question trails off as you follow Karkat’s gaze behind the bar. Lying on the floor with a glass only inches from her fingertips is Rose’s mom. Your mom.

She’s beautiful you think, and in the shape of her chin and the sickly paleness of her skin, you recognize yourself. What would it have been like had you grown up here, with Rose, rather than in the apartment of a psychopath? What parts of you can be traced to this woman and are they enough to distinguish you from the man you killed?

A strained, wavering voice interrupts your thoughts.

“Dave… would appreciate… some… help…”

“Rose?” You lift your gaze off your mom to see Rose working to say another world.

“Dave.”

You start to ask another question but Karkat cuts you off as he steps forward to look at Rose more closely. Awe shines from him as he whispers, “Damn, Rose. Didn’t know people could split-time on their first dreaming.”

A shadow of a satisfied smile pulls at Rose’s lips before fading away. When Karkat straightens, he wears the expression of a general urging his soldiers to a war.

“She needs help, Dave. Get us into Derse.”

“I thought it was too dangerous for me to enter Derse.”

“Not when I’m around, I can cut you off. We go in, I cut Rose and your mom out, we leave. Simple.”

“I-” you begin to say before nodding. You can go back to Derse if it’ll help Rose. You can do this.

You wrap your fingers around Karkat’s thin wrists and take the boy made of storms back to the place where he met you moments after you killed your brother.

  
Derse is cold. You hadn’t realized just how cold it is because you’ve always been hopped up on adrenaline and fear when you entered. The thick sweater serving as the only barrier between you and the chill is enough to keep you from freezing but the wind surrounding the end of the world is enough to send you shivering.

Before you’ve even caught your breath and adjusted to the aubergine sky above, Karkat has already started pushing against the wind and marching towards the Titianesque trees drawn out like surreal skeletons. From this distance, you can faintly make out the twists of their branches and the drapes of their leaves. Small pockmarks of light glow in the dark around the base of their bone-white trunks.

“So you’re just going to head towards what looks like a graveyard as soon as we get here?” you ask Karkat.

“Dave, can you not be a dickhead and just trust that I know what I’m doing. Believe it or not, I possess far more qualifying experiences than you do when it comes to traversing parallel universes filled with unimaginable magical phenomena.”

“Whenever you speak, all I hear is ‘I have a phD in having a stick up my ass and a bachelor’s in having an ego so fragile, I have to reinforce it every few minutes with duct tape and empty threats.’”

“Ha ha, Dave. You’re a real comic.”

“Don’t even, Karkat. You and I both know Terezi would be laughing her blind eyeballs out if she heard the straight shit I just sent your way.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “I hope you know Terezi’s favorite comedians are regularly limited to two brain cells and could qualify as legally dead if each of those brain cells weren’t respectively dedicated to A. living functions and B. spouting complete nonsense that melts the brains of anybody listening.” 

As you enter the fringes of the woods, you feel a creeping sensation stalk into the back of your head. Maybe you’re imagining it, but it feels as though the shadows of the trees are growing longer and the darkness surrounding you both is becoming deeper.

Out of the corner of your eye, Karkat pulls a pair of sickles seemingly out of thin air and holds them with the confidence of someone who has practiced with them for years.

“Holy shit, dude. Is something watching us?”

He doesn’t answer you and instead stops walking to focus on listening to your surroundings. You follow suit and struggle not to think about the ravine you just left behind. The end of the world. The place where your brother’s corpse is probably rotting.

Unless he survived. Unless he’s fucking here fucking stalking you like he used to back in Houston.

“Sollux had some ghost girl haunting him. Is there like an afterlife here?” You ask, afraid of tremors somehow wedging themselves into your voice.

“Dave, can we not talk about Derse powers right now.” 

You don’t want to admit it but Karkat looks taller in the shadows with his sickles by his side. You hope that you’re exuding the same confidence even though you’re terrified of a dead man lurching from the grave. 

“Why can’t you answer the goddamn question right now.”

“I’m kind of not in the mood considering we’re looking for your sister who may or may not be under attack by Derse monsters.” 

“Derse monsters? What the fuck could live here!”

Karkat throws his hands in the air, letting an annoyed sigh blow through his nose as he rolls his eyes as far back as he can. “It’s a parallel universe, Dave. Things work differently here.”

“How,” you demand, “How do they work differently here? Why don’t you clarify for the class, Sensei. Since you’ve trapped me in your home and ‘saved’ me from Derse, you’ve given me nothing but vague statements that I have to piece together and mysterious allusions to things I don’t know about. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re just fucking watching me or something like I’m a bomb about to explode with Derse energy. Is that just too scary for you as a Prospit player?”

He shoots you an incredulous look, “What?! No! Aradia and Sollux are fucking Derse players, you dunkass. Don’t pretend you know anything about anything, especially me. You don’t know shit, Dave.”

Both of your voices are rising but there’s not a sound within the forest to suggest anything is listening. The only thing that keeps you from shouting is the inkling at the back of your neck that makes you feel as if your brother is walking in your shadow.

“You’re right! I don’t know shit! You’ve told me jack since I’ve met you. All you do is avoid me and scowl when you see me.”

He stops walking and turns on his heel to face you, face pulled back into a snarl as he shoves a finger into your chest, “Because I don’t fucking trust you, Dave.”

You take a step back and he takes a step forward and you internally resolve yourself to never step back from him again.

“I don’t know you, and Derse and Prospit can become powerful tools in the wrong hands.”

“I’m just a kid, Karkat. I’ve got no plans of world domination or whatever else you learned about in the movies. What right do you have to withhold information from me like this? Why do you get to decide?”

“I’m being _careful_ , Dave. Something you wouldn’t know about.”

“What the fuck does that mean, Karkat? It’s my power to use, not yours to hold back or leash or whatever the fuck you’re doing to satisfy your boner for power over other people’s lives.”

Karkat lets out a loud growl that rings straight through to your bones. He stalks away from you, dead set on avoiding your gaze and doing everything in his power to signal that this conversation is over. Karkat isn’t your parent though. Nobody is.

You forge forward with a final question, tugging impatiently at his sleeve to make him stop marching away.

“Why are you so against me? What the hell did I do to offend every molecule in your being so much?”

Karkat stares down at your right hand pulling at his sweater. His anger seems to drop away as he takes in the way your left hand uneasily tightens and loosens at the sword hanging by your side.

When he speaks, his voice is emotionless. “Why did you enter Derse that day, Dave?”

Your heart skips a beat. Flatlines. You don’t want to think about that day. Bro’s eyes are prickling on the back of your head. You can feel your fingers automatically tightening around your sword’s hilt, worn and familiar against the calluses on your palm.

There was so much fucking blood that day but you didn’t see half of it as it dripped down the end of your sword and spiralled into the darkness below and you are spiralling and spiralling and spiralling.

“...what?” Your voice is a wavering ghost, one bright light away from fading away like the morning mist. Your hand drops from his arm and hangs at your side. It only seems to galvanize Karkat to press deeper into the open wounds you’ve been hiding.

“Why were you on that roof, Dave.”

He’s all rigid lines, all cold flame and sharpened scythe points and lightning without thunder and you desperately want him to be angry again. You desperately want him to stop pinning you down with an intense gaze and curling his fingers slightly around his sickles that you thought were so cool like three seconds ago and all you’re seeing is blood blood blood and all you’re hearing is the clash of metal on metal.

When you don’t respond and instead just stare vacantly down at the mess of his hair and the folds of his sweater that you were just wearing last week, he repeats himself and his voice is so much softer than before that you feel like the emotional whiplash could kill you.

“Dave. It’s alright. You can tell me.”

He reaches out to reassure you maybe or hold you fast or beat you into a goddamn pulp but you slip out from under his reach before he can touch you, all arms pinwheeling and legs flash stepping away for distance. Time slows without you asking it to and he is left moving millisecond by millisecond and you want to leave but instead you hit unpause and you say, “I’m not- I’m not a murderer, Karkat. I don’t owe you any explanations.”

He glowers at you, his eyebrows resting like brooding clouds over his darkened expression. You don’t care. It’s so much more comfortable to handle Karkat’s anger than the flat expression your brother used to turn to you with.

You hold in your sigh of relief when he continues with his march.

“You’re unbelievable, Strider.”

With a glance over your shoulder at the shadows in the trees, you remind yourself that the name is yours and yours alone and your brother is dead. “But you believe me.”

“...I want to.”

The trees begin to thin out ahead and Karkat and you both quicken your pace as the caw of crows register in your ears. You break into a small clearing ringed by neatly trimmed willow trees. The birds circle overhead, diving over and over. Several small beasts that look like wolves with six legs and two mouths nip and bite at Rose’s heels. You feel your heart quicken as you realize you’re about to enter a fight. Rose is struggling to pull her mom out of a large crack in the ground with dark shadows reaching out and wrapping around Rose’s arms.

Somehow, time slows down again. Your body knows what to do and sweeps Karkat up before sprinting to where Rose is. Your sword slashes through one of the wolves just as time resumes its pace.

“Dave,” Rose gasps out, “You made it.”

“‘Course I did, Rose. What do you take me for? Some procrastinating scallywag who’d forget his sister in the midst of his own personal problems?”

A bird looking thing swoops down and nearly pecks out your eyes. Rose is unamused by the close call. 

“Not that I don’t agree with your point but let’s focus on the matter at hand.”

A wolf thing whines and rolls away before fading out of existence when Rose lands a particularly powerful kick at it. You leap forward to swipe your sword through two of them. To Rose’s left, Karkat is dual-wielding his sickles like a god and begrudging respect wells up within you when he slashes down the sides of a wolf and then slices the wings right off a bird swooping down.

With the reprieve from the onslaught of monsters, Rose focuses on wrenching her mom out of the shadows but they only cling to the both of them. You stab a particularly large wolf through the spine and hear a nasty crunch.

The snarls of the wolves and the caws of the birds are almost enough to drown out the sound but your ears are particularly attuned to low sounds. A sort of rumble is shaking the ground beneath your feet and you barely have time to ready yourself when a wave of more shadows surge out of the canyon Rose’s mom is slipping into.

“Fuck!” you hear Karkat yell, “We’ve gotta get away from that thing.”

Rose’s footing slips and you realize she’s wearing two-inch heels that are three bad steps away from breaking. You rush forward to grab her by the shoulders and stabilize her. Together, you try to pry her mom out of the reach of the darkness but the shadows only seem to tighten their grip.

Behind you, you hear a scuffle and can barely turn your head to catch a glimpse of Karkat burying his sickle into the side of a wolf. It leaves a long garish rip through its fur and spews dark ichor all over Karkat’s grey sweater and pale face.

“Rose!” Karkat calls out, “You have to let go!”

Holy shit. What is he talking about. That’s your fucking mom.

You say so as loud as you can, “What are you talking about! That’s my fucking mom!”

A strange expression comes over Karkat’s face. For a moment, his guard drops as his shoulders slip a fraction and his mouth tightens at the corners.

“I’m sorry, Dave…” he mutters and then is interrupted by a wolf scratching its claws down the side of his face leaving a line of blood. “AH FUCK!”

You look down at Rose’s mom. At your mom. You just met her. You’re so fucking close to meeting her.

Her lipstick is a dark, dark black against her pale face. You let go of her sleeve with your left hand and you and Rose are dragged forward an inch towards the ravine. In the background, you can hear Karkat cursing and you know he’s fighting a losing battle. The birds circle above the fray over and over, waiting for someone to fall, waiting for a carcass to pick from.

Rose turns to you, wide-eyed and scared and somehow _knowing_. You think you know it too and you hate it. You hate it. Fingers trembling, you trace your mom’s cold cheek and let the back of your hand hover over her lips.

Not a single breeze stirs and you are spiralling and spiralling and spiralling.

“Rose, let go,” you say. All quiet, all tension. You won’t let her go until Rose does. You’re staying with Rose. You’re here for fucking Rose. Above every other shitty thing in this world, Rose comes first.

She shakes her head mutely, lips trembling and cheeks wet.

A bird is diving from above as you are both dragged forward another feet towards the ledge. You let go.

Your sword materializes in your hand as if by magic and slices through the bird’s neck before it can touch Rose. You curl your fingers around Rose’s wrist and try to impress upon her that this fucking sucks. That this is fucking hell. But she has to live through this.

Her voice trembles when she talks, “Dave, don’t make me.”

“I won’t,” you promise, “But you have to let go.”

“I can’t,” she cries, “I can’t.”

You reach forward and curl your fingers around Rose’s hands where she’s clutching onto her mom’s arm. Karkat is suddenly by your side, a hand lightly resting on top of yours and Rose’s hands. Looking ahead, you realize the darkness is pulling you all in closer and closer.

Time slows down but you move more quickly than you’ve ever moved before.

Your fingers pull Rose’s hands away from her mom.

She whirls into your shoulder. You blink, and the three of you are back in the bar.

Rose slips off of her chair. The room is silent but for the shuffle of broken glass on the tiles as Rose circles the bar and stares down at her mom. Your mom. Mom.

She remains still as stone. In that moment, you don’t think any of you could move her even if you wanted to and you can imagine this place falling to ruins and Mom’s body wrapped up in wilting vines centuries from now. She’s the sky on Atlas’s shoulder, a weight on Rose. Unmoveable.

Karkat breaks the stillness, moves as if he’s walking through sludge. He squats beside Rose and rests a hand on her shoulder. You hear bits and pieces of his apology, his attempts at offering some semblance of comfort or shelter from this nuclear bomb of a tragedy.

He looks up at you and his gaze pierces through the white noise clouding up your head as you hyperfocus on Mom’s hair spread out like a halo on the floor. With his subtle nod towards Rose, he conveys his message loud and clear.

_Help your sister, pisscouch._

You lick your lips nervously before shuffling closer to her and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She leans into you without hesitation, drawing comfort from your warmth, but refuses to look away from her mom.

“Dave, you should go with Karkat,” she whispers with a voice so thin, you think it could give out with the gentlest of nudges. “He’ll need your help with other Derse dreamers.”

“Rose, you can come live with us, if you want,” Karkat offers as if he doesn’t mind taking in another kid, a thousand kids, as if his house was built to take in stray orphans and abused murderers.

She shakes her head, her hair tickling the bottom of your nose, before reaching out and pulling a stray strand of hair behind Mom’s ear. “There are some chores to see to here before I can go. Loose ends to tie and dust to air out.”

You don’t know what to say even as Karkat looks towards you beseechingly. You don’t have anything to say.

“Can I have a moment alone with her?” Rose asks.

Part of you doesn’t want to leave Rose here with the dim lights flickering above and the broken glass shattered around her dead mom. But Karkat eases you up and shepherds you away, gentle but persistent in bundling you out.

“It would probably be best if you stayed,” Karkat mutters to you.

“Yeah.” You respond as if on autopilot. Your brain holds all the answers, it just has to spit them out.

“Were she and Rose close?”

“Yeah.”

“Were you close with her too?”

You hesitate to respond. You don’t know how to. She was your mom.

“...No. I’ve never seen my mom before. Rose and I were separated as kids.”

When his hand lands on your arm and squeezes it slightly, you feel reality slip back into you a little bit. Looking at Karkat is nothing like looking into a stormfront anymore. All the sharp lines and corners of him are softened and smaller and it dawns on you that he’s trying to comfort you over the death of someone you never knew.

“Are you alright?”

You don’t answer that question but instead think about your mom. Rose’s mom. Mom Lalonde. Mom.

God, you don’t even know her name. Your own name is probably more appropriately Dave Lalonde, not some made up last name you gave yourself.

“My dad was… fucked up. Insisted I call him Bro. I never even knew his name.” You pause. Swallow. Find yourself explaining a mystery you never want to think about again. “He was crazy. I never thought I’d outlive my mom. I thought- I thought I’d die before both my parents.” _That’s why I killed him_ hangs unspoken in the air between you two.

“Dave, you’re here. I won’t let you die.” He says it fierce and the storm returns to his expression but for once it is not hurling lightning bolts in your direction. You remember he’s been trained for this. This is his legacy. Keeping useless idiots like you alive.

His phone pings and he glances down at it to read a text.

“I’m gonna go now, Dave. I’ve got work tomorrow… unless you want me to call in sick?” The question is a peace offering and part of you wants to ask him to stay with you and Rose because Rose and you have always relied on the other to keep from falling apart. You shake your head though because this is Lalonde business.

“Ok,” he says with one final concerned look, “Let me know if you need anything.”

And then he disappears and you’re left to pick up the shattered glass that remains in the Lalonde household.

  
EB: hey dave! i feel like it’s been forever since we last spoke. is everything alright on your end of things?  


GG: dave!!!  
GG: john told me you mentioned you were hanging out at roses house! unfair!!  
GG: i want to hang out with my favorite people in the world too!  
GG: tell rose to check her pesterchum! she isnt responding to my messages!  
GG: i miss rose! maybe i can figure out this transporter thing ive been working on!  
GG: itd be so cool if we could all hang out! :D  
  


EB: i heard about what happened from jade…  
EB: that really sucks. but at least you have each other right now!  
EB: message me if you need someone to talk to. maybe we can pal around or something?  


GG: i just need one more part and i can pop down to you guys! im bringing pumpkins!  
GG: unless… thats not alright??  
GG: im sorry, i want to help you both but i dont really know how!!!!  


The episode ends on the television and the room falls silent as you and Rose wait for the countdown to finish and for Netflix to autoplay the next episode of Friends. The shitty little, “Are you still watching?” pops up and Rose hits play. As the theme song begins playing, you scroll through the messages you’ve gotten on the phone Karkat dropped off along with some clothes the other day.

You glance over at Rose over the rim of your phone, furtive despite the fact that your eyes are safe from analysis because of your sunglasses. Deep shadows from the closed curtains only seem to make the dark bruises under her eyes stand out. Neither of you have moved much in the last week and you’ve managed to finish about two seasons of Friends.

“How would you feel about Jade and John visiting?” you ask.

Rose takes a long, noisy sip from her grape juicebox.

“Frankly, Dave, I don’t even know how I feel about you being here.”

You tell Jade that you and Rose are doing great. Absolutely great. Completely absolutely fine and dandy. When she starts to ask you if you’ve eaten much, you check the time and realize noon has come and gone and neither of you have eaten breakfast. Instead of telling Jade about this realization, you abandon ship and dodge out of that pesterlog.

Rose’s stash of cup noodles is running low. You make a mental note to have some delivered to the house sometime later. Or maybe you’ll just ask Karkat to drop some off. The idea of seeing anyone other than Rose again for a while isn’t thrilling though.

While you wait for the water to boil you sneak a peek at Rose. Had you met this Rose last week, you wouldn’t have believed it was her. Her hair is an uncombed mess and she’s taken to exclusively wearing pajamas around the house and refusing to leave to get some sunlight. Even from this distance, you can tell that her hair is getting a little too oily to be comfortable.

Once you’ve finished uh… cooking… the ramen, you head back to the couch and pass a cup over to Rose. She picks absentmindedly at the food but you doubt she’ll eat more than half of it.

“Dude,” you ask midslurp, “when was the last time you showered?”

“Dave, I haven’t moved from this couch in two weeks. What do you think?”

You don’t actually remember showering but you recall not wearing this t-shirt yesterday, suggesting that autopilot has helped you mostly survive so far.

“Maybe you… should?”

Rose ignores you in favor of placing her barely touched ramen on the table in front of her.

“Rose, I’m serious. You might feel better.”

“What does it matter?”

“Feeling better should be a pretty big motivator. Hop onto the self-care train, Rose. Next stop, Shower City.” You get up to pull her off the couch and she shrinks away from you while trying to maintain her view of the TV. Ross can go and fuck himself though, your sister needs to take a shower.

“If you’re presuming to take over the role of my mother following her vacancy, I hope you understand that I will not be allowing it and I have not been looking for applicants.”

“Rose, cut the crap. You already smell like it.” You tug at her arm a little without yanking too hard.

“I don’t want to,” she says, brows furrowing together as she pulls away from you and attempts to burrow herself deeper into the crack in the couch. The irritation in her voice is meant to be cutting but you let it roll right off of you. You’re rubber and she’s glue.

“Trust me on this, beloved sister. Light of my life. Sis. You need a shower. Self-care is the best care.” You’ve managed to wrestle her arm off the couch despite her vehement refusal to budge an inch or help you lift her up at all. Her elbow jabs straight into your gut and her head knocks back to give you a great whiff of her greasy hair as you struggle to wrap your arms around her waist and heft her up. Rose’s words become one garbled screech as you lift a hand to settle your glasses back on your nose.

You’re probably fucking this up.

“What do you even know about health dearest brother? You used to stash Doritos in your fucking closet,” Rose says in the pause it takes for you to adjust your shades.

Everything stills in your chest and, before you can even process all of the alarms ringing in your head, you drop Rose and take a step back.

Fuck, what _do_ you know? You stayed with a madman for years and called the place home, called the psychopath your brother and cool and better than you. You still sometimes feel that way about him even when your hands ache without a sword nearby.

The noise in your head quiets as you realize silence has descended on the room. Rose is standing up now too, her hands curling and uncurling by her side over and over and all of the harshness she’d previously wielded fading from her face as she hunches downward.

“Dave. I’m so sorry,” she whispers, voice trembling and arms shaking. You’re definitely fucking this up. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I didn’t- I shouldn’t have-”

You are so tired.

“I know, Rose,” you mumble, “I know.”

Her eyes look all kinds of watery and she hasn’t cried since the incident and you can’t stand to see her crying again and- And you are so so tired.

“It’s alright,” you say, and then grab her wrist and gently pull her upstairs to the bathroom with the shower. “C’mon. Take a shower.”

You shut the door behind you and cross the hall to pull out a set of clothes for Rose. Maybe you don’t know jack about health. Maybe you’re both going to die because you don’t have enough experience to keep Rose and you alive. Maybe you’ll both just starve to death here after eating too much ramen and too little broccoli.

As you return to leave the clothes on the floor in front of the bathroom, you go to knock before hearing quiet whimpers through the door. God, you’re bad at this. You’re so bad at this.

The door eases open without a sound, well-oiled around the hinges because, according to Rose, her mom used to sneak around silently from room to room. Rose is crumpled on the floor, shoulders hunched and violent sobs wracking her whole body. When she catches sight of you, a hand raises to muffle herself as if becoming composed can help either of you out of this situation.

“Hey, hey,” you say, kneeling down beside her. What do you say in this situation? There, there?

You offer her the clothes and she reaches past you to drag some toilet paper out of its holder and blows her nose.

“I uh… brought you some clothes,” you say.

After blowing her nose, she pulls the clothes you’re holding out and delicately places them on her lap. You settle down beside her, stretching your legs out on the cold bathroom tiles. Everything feels surreal about this. Part of you feels as if you are only an observer floating in the corner watching your dumbass of a doppleganger fail at helping your sister who was willing to do anything for you, including help you get away with murder.

As if reading your mind, Rose rests her head on your chest, muffled hiccups rising from her as she reasserts control over her tear ducts.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“It’s alright. You’re going through a lot.”

Her voice is soft as she laces her fingers with yours and squeezes your arm with her hand. “No, not for- not for that. Well- Not entirely.”

She takes a breath. You are witnessing the deconstruction of Rose Lalonde. It is neither satisfying or enjoyable.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when your brother died like you’ve been here for me.”

It’s an unexpected apology for something you never considered a crime.

“He…” You struggle to find the words to impress on her just how much you don’t care that he’s dead. (Except you do care. In the back of your mind.) “He wasn’t important to me like your mom was to you.” You finally finish.

Rose shakes her head, knows you better than you know yourself even now when she has broken down on her own bathroom floor. “It doesn’t change the fact that he was important to you.”

“He was important to me. But not as important as you.”

Her eyes squeeze close but a few tears leak out anyways. Rose draws in a long, shaky breath before disentangling her arms from yours and leading you out of the bathroom.

“Thank you, Dave. For staying.”

You nod because you don’t know what else you can do. As you head downstairs, you Google recipes that involve the ingredients you’re pretty sure haven’t rotted in the fridge.

  


You and Rose have just finished watching a second episode of Friends after you loaded the rice cooker when the doorbell rings. Neither of you are expecting company. Obviously.

As you approach the door, your sword falls into your hand, slotting in against your callousness like an extension of your arm. Rose looks out the peephole before blinking over her shoulder at you and throwing open the door without comment.

“It worked!”

Jade lunges forward, curling her arms around Rose’s neck and half-lifting her, half-choking her with a tight hug. Lingering behind her is John, smiling widely and adjusting his glasses nervously. Becquerel is barking at their feet.

“Hey Dave,” John calls out.

Behind John is a tall man carrying several pumpkins stacked high. He sidles around Jade and Rose and heads straight to the kitchen. So dinner is taken care of.

Jade is still clinging to Rose and rambling about how glad she is to have made it here so John also steps around them to talk to you. Or hug you, you guess. Part of you doesn’t know how to respond to his tight hug so you let him pull you close until he lets go.

“How are you… here?” You ask, dazed.

“Jade jigger rigged up some kind of instantaneous transportation device that her grandpa had been developing for years but never finished. I told her you were fine but she insisted so here we are! We can leave if this is too much of a bother. Jade just can’t leave well enough alone.”

You look at Rose over John’s shoulder. A small smile pulls at the corner of her lips as she listens intently to Jade.

“No, Jade was right,” you find yourself saying. “I’m glad you came.”

  


The lights are still on in Rose’s room at midnight, sending long trailing fingers of yellow lamplight reaching out from beneath her door. You’re restless. You’ve spent the last hour drilling holes into the cracks in the guest bedroom’s ceiling with your eyes. Thoughts about death and what it might mean now that Rose’s mom is gone and you want her back and your brother is gone and you’re terrified he’ll come back have dragged you out of your room to haunt the hallways of the Lalonde household.

Quiet murmurs reach your searching ears. Even after so long away from your brother’s presence, you can’t stop yourself from always listening and always looking. The door opens to reveal Rose knitting on her desk chair and John animatedly telling her about the latest Ghostbuster video game he downloaded online and broke his computer with.

You shuffle into the room with a nod in John’s direction after he greets you and pick your way through the minefield of half-filled journals and unspooling yarn balls sprawled across the floor. You clear a space on the floor by shoving Rose’s wizard smut beneath the bed before plopping down and knocking your head back on the bed frame.

“We thought you were asleep,” Rose hums, pulling at some yarn in her lap.

“Can’t,” you respond.

“I’ll text Jade and let her know you’re here too,” John says, kicking his feet near your face jokingly. You bat them away in mock annoyance before leaning back on the palms of your hands.

John keeps up steady chatter, filling up the silence that normally wormed its way into the room for this last week or so with Rose. Jade arrives some time later with four cups of cocoa in toll. Eventually, all four of you end up on the bed, batting the conversation back and forth and turning over topics that are comfortable and easy to talk about.

You fall asleep tangled with your friends, wondering how you ever fell asleep before without the warmth of something like a family curled around you.

  


The spade hits the cold ground with a dull crack. John is sitting down on the ground now, blowing on the blisters on his hands. You check your hands and briefly worry that your calluses will break up before stepping down on the head of the shovel and lifting out some more dirt.

You roll your eyes when John makes a show of looking around before getting to his feet. “It looks deep enough to me, Dad. I’m outta here for some lemonade.”

The complete opposite to John in this regard, Mr. Egbert has worked tirelessly to dig out this hole, taking on the bulk of the work with an almost superhuman strength and endurance. You and John offered to help but you regret it now because the cold, packed dirt is refusing to budge very much.

It takes you a day to dig the grave while Jade prepares the funeral. Before you know it, you’re borrowing a slightly too wide suit from Karkat and staring down at your dirty red converse. They stand out starkly with the inch of snow covering the ground in front of the grave where you’ve buried your mom. Mom.

How do you mourn a parent you never knew?

Jade hands everyone a single white rose from a bouquet and then gives the rest to Rose. You don’t know if there’s a proper ceremony for this sort of thing or if Jade is just winging it. Still, it all feels very formal. Structured. A step-by-step guide meant to teach the living how to forget the dead. When you look over at Rose with her perfectly painted face and straightened white hair, you doubt the dead here will be easily forgotten.

One by one, you each step forward and leave the flowers in your hand atop the gravestone. Rose lingers, head bent down and hidden from the four of you standing behind her. For a moment, you think she is crying, but then she speaks and her voice is clear and unwavering.

“My cat died a few years ago. I loved that cat so Mom held a funeral like this one. We buried him in the backyard in a tailored suit with the most expensive coffin money could buy. She made him a mortuary of marble and, afterwards, we sat in the kitchen and she made me my favorite meal.”

Her voice begins shaking now. At first, you take her tone to mean she is crying out of sadness but then her shame and guilt leaks through.

“I thought she was making fun of me. That all of the… the pomp… was just another way to mock me in our war of sincerity. I really loved that cat.”

Rose tilts her head back and you see the tears slipping down her face as she closes her eyes and tries to keep from falling apart. “I realize now, standing here in front of her grave, that my mom really loved that cat too. And maybe she really loved me too. I’m glad you are all here. I love you. Truly.”

Jade is sobbing by the end of Rose’s words and gathers you all into a group hug. Mr. Egbert silently wipes away at a single tear while you numbly bury your head into John’s shoulder and wrap your arms around him and Rose beside you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been forever since I last updated but life got hectic and this chapter got really long. I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading!


	6. Gatsby's Green Sign

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote 80% of this in the span of the last two days because seeing a ton of NaNoWriMo posts got me motivated. There's actual Davekat action in this that I might post as a separate ficlet!

“Pass the salt.”

The spice cabinet swings open and you spend a solid five minutes sifting through the curry and the oregano to reach for the iodized salt in the back, a bright yellow umbrella wrapped around its exterior. When you hand it to Jade, she tips it over into her hand and nothing comes out.

“Uh,” you say helpfully. “Give me a second.”

You reach up to the right and above the stove to open another cabinet, this time moving around bottles and checking their labels before finally finding a tall glass bottle with a fish artfully drawn on the front.

“Try this.”

“To replace salt?”

“It’s fish sauce. A ton of the recipes Rose’s mom shoved into the cabinets use it to flavor soups. It’s like a soup of its own.” You consider the bottle in your hand. “Maybe we can just boil this and call it a day?” Rose’s mom. _Mom_ passes through your head but you resolutely ignore the voice in your head asking you to examine all that you’ve lost in a person you never met.

Jade wrinkles her nose as she swipes it from your hand. “Not to rain on your parade, but that’s a terrible idea.”

You shrug before pushing yourself up onto your perch on the counter that you had previously occupied to stare down at Jade as she tips some of the fish sauce into the soup, tastes the soup, and then tips more in.

“So you just boil the hell out of these loaded, uncarved jack-o-lanterns?”

“Yeah! Well, mostly. Here, taste some!”

Jade shoves a spoonful of boiling soup into your mouth that tastes more like burnt taste buds than fish sauce but you swallow it and give her a thumbs up because any home cooked meal is better than stale Doritos and microwave pizza.

As Jade chatters about how she’ll be able to plant pumpkins in the backyard when the snow thaws, you find your gaze wandering up the stairs to Rose’s room. After John and his dad headed out, she mumbled something about meditating and has locked herself away for hours every day. You don’t know what she’s doing in there but Karkat’s anxious texts asking if Rose was alright was a good enough indicator that whatever she was doing wasn’t on this plane of reality.

You wonder if she’s alright or if this is another strange stage of mourning. Have you gone through stages of mourning about Bro?

A gentle nudge breaks your rambling train of thought.

“Maybe you should talk to her,” Jade says.

You shoot her a meaningful glance from behind your sunglasses even though she can’t even see your eyes.

“Why don’t you?”

“ _I’m_ not her brother,” Jade responds primly as she stirs the pot once more. Little bits of pumpkin break off and float to the surface and you wonder briefly if this is a real recipe Jade learned or something she’s picked up after years of living on her own.

A part of you doesn’t want to walk up those stairs and mess up on comforting Rose or helping Rose or talking to Rose. With a sigh, you hop off the counter anyways and begin the trek to her room. In the end, you’re her brother and probably the only fucker who actually knows intimately what it’s like to lose a person you had a wacky ass kind of bad relationship with. (In your case, kind of a really bad relationship.)

You glance back at Jade once before disappearing up the stairs in the hopes that the sight of her will give you more courage. All she sends you is good will and two thumbs up.

Rose’s room is silent, bathed in a dark magenta light filtering through her purple curtains. You kick at the clothes scattered on the ground until they’re in a neat corner and then make your way to stand in front of Rose.

She remains unresponsive and unmoving from her seat on the edge of her bed, hands resting on her lap. You know that she knows that you’re here, but ask her aloud if she’s waltzing through Derse anyways.

She doesn’t respond.

Typical.

You think back to what Rose told you about remaining in Derse, how allowing your emotions to seize control over you and make you panic can make you more susceptible to being pulled in by Derse. You haven’t been back since Mom died. You’ve never been there without Karkat to pull you out. Rose likes to make things difficult sometimes, doesn’t she?

You hoist yourself up onto the bed and settle beside Rose before shutting your eyes and slipping through the backdoor into Derse that has been buzzing ever since you first unlocked your powers. You want to say the sensation is familiar, like coming to a second home, but all it does is leave you sick to your stomach when you find yourself, once again, standing before the very end of the world. Without hesitation, you turn on your heel and head towards Rose’s gazebo. You push Bro out of your mind because you have a sister to take care of now.

The land looks different now. Healthier. The leaves on the trees glow a light lavender and the crystals rising up around the roots of the trees like mushrooms cast a blue tint over anything nearby.

 _Why did you enter Derse that day, Dave?_ rings in your head as you pass through the grove of trees Karkat and you argued under. Part of you wants to tell him, wants to find an excuse for what you did, wants someone to tell you that what you did was wrong or what you did was right.

 _I was afraid,_ you think to yourself. _I was tired of being afraid._

_I was scared of ending up like him._

_I’m terrified that I still will._

The trees thin out to reveal Rose’s gazebo, immaculate to the smallest of details and bare of any trace of the fight that had taken place here the last time you’d been around. High above the gazebo’s pristine white roof shingles, large crows with wingspans as long as you are tall circle over and over, calling distantly in frustration. Long streaks of lightning crashes into one of the birds and thunder shakes the ground. It falls in a spiral, landing somewhere in the foliage. Sitting in one of the porch chairs with a cup of tea between her laced fingers is Rose.

She looks at peace. Images of marble statues rise to your mind and you feel as though you’re trespassing on something best left untouched. You shake the feeling from yourself though and sidle next to Rose.

“Aren’t you worried about those birds attacking?”

Another strike of lightning crashes on a crow, sending it plummeting down to the ground. It hits the dust in front of the steps up to the raised wood floors of the gazebo with a dull thud. The smell of burnt feathers and flesh reaches your nose before the monster disappears, leaving behind a glitter of blue and purple crystals in the ground.

“We’re safe here,” Rose says. “I have an understanding with some gods.”

You ignore the thunder rumbling above and cracking the place in two.

“An understanding… with some gods.”

“Yes. My mother’s murderers.” Rose’s gaze is distant as if it pains her to talk about this. She takes a long sip of her tea and her shoulders lower ever so slightly as she relaxes enough to explain what she means. “They need me to become powerful. For the time being, our most fortunate paths are aligned for as far as I have seen despite how our goals place us on opposing sides of the chess table. They plan to make me a pawn and hope that I haven’t enough of a view of the game to become a player worth challenging. That’s why I’ve been here. I’m researching.”

“You’re playing chess with your enemy,” you say flatly.

Rose shrugs. “Something like that.”

She looks like herself, like she’s recovered from her long depression; but uneasiness slips beneath your skin and makes your nerves itch at the thought that she is only so at peace because she has set herself on avenging her mom.

“Let’s go, Rose. You’ve been at it for hours.”

“Have I?” The question is unsurprised and unbothered by your urgency.

“Dinner is probably ready by now anyways.”

Rose pins you down with her gaze as if delving into the layers of your psyche and coming up with all the wrong answers. After a moment of scrutinization, she rises from her seat and takes your hand. You’re not above confessing that you feel relief flood you when she agrees with you.

“Alright, let’s go.”

  


It’s midconversation when Rose breaks out of her silence to abruptly rest her spoon on the side of her bowl and look up to say to you, “You need to go back to Karkat.”

The only sound is Bec eating some of the garlic bread Jade tossed him.

You snort, “Rose, if you think I’m leaving behind my favorite sister and maniac friend to their own devices to go and crawl back to the ever unintelligible and way-too-serious ‘Karkat Vantas’s lectures on absolutely nothing because he refuses to ever be useful ever period exclamation mark period,’ then your gods must be muttering more nonsense in your ears than you realize.”

Rose is completely unfazed. Which is expected albeit completely disappointing. Instead of addressing the very valid concerns and arguments you’ve supplied, she delicately pats her mouth with her napkin and drags out her passive aggressive bullshit response.

“Dave, as Seer of Light, you know I wouldn’t say this lightly.”

“Seer of what?”

“My powers.”

You roll your eyes at how she’s forcing you to ask questions for clarification but bite the bullet and ask anyways.

“I’m assuming I also have a weird title?” 

“Yes, Knight of Time, and it is vital that you return to the Vantas household. You have work to do there and you shouldn’t worry too much about me; I have Jade.”

“Jade, tell Rose she’s being crazy and that this makes no sense. It makes no sense for me to stay and abuse the hospitality of some random guy who lugged me off of a roof and whose only connection with me is that he was kind of present for the bucket kicking of like two people who were only kind of related to me when I can stay here in a perfectly fine home with my good friend and my favorite sister.”

Jade doesn’t back you up on this. Goddamn. It’s like you’re getting tag teamed by all the snarky broads of the world.

“Based off of what I’ve gathered, Rose’s spooky witch powers are probably important…”

Rose reaches across the table to wrap her hands around your wrist. You realize that her fingernails are freshly painted now after weeks of letting the nail polish chip away. This is an argument you aren’t winning.

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

A groan erupts from you and you pillow your head on your arms on the table.

“I don’t even like the guy. He hates my guts for no reason…”

There is amusement in Rose’s voice when she responds, “He saved our lives for no reason too. There are others that will need saving in the coming months.”

“I’m not some hero, Rose.”

She pats your hand patronizingly. “You’re good enough.” You’re glad she repainted them. It almost feels like she’s back.

  


Kanaya warns you before teleporting you back to the Vantas mansion that things have been Rather Hectic Of Late. You try to use that as a reason to stay but Rose twists it into a reason for you to go so you concede to allowing Kanaya to warp you back. (Not that she couldn’t do it against your will.)

You pop into existence in an empty hall. The nausea fades much more quickly than it has in the past and, within moments, it is only a distant memory of ghost pain. A loud argument has you straightening up and looking towards the door you’ve apparated outside out. You consider knocking but that idea is knocked out the window almost immediately.

The door crashes open. The girl you understand to be Vriska breaks through like the shot that rang round the world. Her protests are loud and grating on your ears. She’s being manhandled and roughly shoved by… oh. Oh god. 

You are mildly concerned by the appearance of the buffest dude you’ve ever seen. When Vriska tries to push past him to get back inside the room, he wraps his hands around her waist easily and picks her up like she’s a composition notebook and he’s an anime girl just about to rush out the door to the class she’s late for. Vriska is protesting loudly and trying to scratch his eyes out as if this man is not actually literally swol as fuck. His bulging muscles and awful sense of fashion has you on high alert.

Vriska squirms out of his grasp. Somehow. She’s tossing her hair over her shoulder and sneering like she’s just bested this obviously massive guy at a game of chess.

“Hah!” she calls out, voice high and reedy, “Your sweaty paws are not nearly strong enough to hold a Serket down!”

He doesn’t try to grab her again and instead grumbles in a deep and gravelly voice, “I was afraid of breaking your spine.”

Vriska looks struck for a moment and you think you can actually see her hair raise up like she’s an indignant cat bristling at the idea that she is anything but the top dog in the house.

“Excuse me?!” Vriska blusters.

He’s already turning around to go back into the room.

“The decrepit, blind one… commanded… that you be left outside to prevent you from interfering further.”

“I was only trying to help!” Vriska screeches.

You find your voice before the door shuts.

“Hey wait.” 

Sweaty Hulk pauses.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Vriska rolls her eyes. “Poor wittle Karkles was stupid and got a lil tiny bump on his head and everybody’s acting like he’s about to die.”

“What, really?” you ask. It explains the lack of shouting you’ve been subjected to since you returned.

“See for yourself,” Sweaty Hulk says. Vriska appears to go through at least three stages of mourning when the amount of offense she takes at your invitation practically stops her heart. You ignore her in favor of sidestepping the sweaty guy and easing into the room.

Karkat is comatose on the floor. You’ve never seen him so still and quiet and it’s unnerving as fuck. Without opening her eyes, Terezi blindly (ha, like everything she does) waves for you to come closer and take her hand. The Sweaty Hulk goes to stand off to the side.

You settle down between Terezi and Kanaya where Terezi insistently pats her hand before letting Terezi worm her hand into yours. The world shifts in the blink of an eye. Everything is replaced by a sky that is way too fucking bright. The four of you are gathered on an island and stretching to the horizon in every direction is a mirror of a still lake reflecting every bit of the awful light through your sunglasses and into your corneas.

A natural basin appears to be in the center of the island and Terezi, Kanaya, and you are knelt around it. Floating in the center of the water is Karkat, his dark curls sticking to his temples. Kanaya barely glances up at you as if taking her vigilant eyes off of Karkat would cause him to disappear.

The waters lap gently against the shores. Overhead, the clouds are swirling in and out of themselves.

“Is he uh,” you clear your throat, “...alright?”

You feel a little dizzy.

“He’s fine,” Terezi explains. “He just got a head injury while pulling Equius from Derse.”

He doesn’t look fine.

He looks like he got run over by a fire truck. His arm is mawled all along the arm by what you can only assume are wolf bites and his head is leaking like a runny nose. As you watch the waters around him ripple with a passing breeze skimming its surface, you put two and two together and realize the bruising on his left arm is slowly fading. If he’s been here awhile, he must’ve looked a helluva lot worse earlier.

Terezi stands up without warning, leaving a hand resting on your shoulder, and shifts her “gaze” outwards to the horizon. Right. There might be weird monsters here. Explains why you’re all just chilling around Karkat’s limp carcass.

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Kanaya murmurs to you.

You shrug. Whatever. A spike of irritation shoots through you slightly but you ignore it since it’s directed at the guy who’s currently lying in a basin of healing water.

“Karkat tell you?” You ask anyways, voice cold and flat.

Kanaya startles and actually looks up at you for the first time. Her whole face flushes scarlet and wow that is a weird color for her. Actually? You don’t know jack about fashion but you think the red of her face could definitely match her skirt.

“I- uh- No,” she stutters. “Rose told me.”

Oh. Weird. You hadn’t known they talked. You also hadn’t known that Rose had been messaging anyone while you were with her too. You store the information away to focus back on the situation at hand though.

“What even happened to him?”

Kanaya ducks her head down and you realize she probably really and truly worries about this kid who likes to yell people’s ears off and impose his rules on you. Part of you can get it. You still remember him in Rose’s hall, murmuring to Rose while she knelt beside the body of her dead corpse mom.

“Dreamers have been… unexpectedly pulled into Derse and Prospit lately.”

You’ve just started feeling properly sorry for the guy when he sits up abruptly with a spluttery shout, arms waving in every direction and nearly snatching your sunglasses from your face.

Terezi sits back down by your side and grabs hold of you before you can stumble backwards away from Karkat’s flailing limbs while Kanaya tries to coax him back into the water. He’s taking none of her shit for some reason though and drags himself out. When he scrambles to his feet, Terezi pulls you up too.

“Jesus shit,” he grumbles, “How fucking long was I under? When I get my hands on Equius, I’m going to strangle his Void powers out of him. If Nepeta hadn’t gotten ahold of me sooner, we’d both be lying face down in the inky waters of Derse, our larynxes gently caressed by the seaweeds that were pretty much desperate to drag us under.”

He looks up from where he was wringing out a corner of his sweater. His eyes lock onto you.

“What the fuck,” he says in greeting.

You raise your fingers and return his friendly greeting with a bland wave. He looks past you and turns to Terezi.

“Why is he in Prospit. Get him out of here. Wait, let’s all get out of here. Fuck my sweater smells like grody holy water. I need a hot shower and maybe a tub of cologne mixed with deoderant to get the scent of algae out from between my toes. It’s like I’ve been sitting in mold and mildew for five centuries.”

Terezi gives Karkat a good long sniff that he patiently endures with a resignation that can only be built up from years of experience with Terezi’s weird antics. She grins at Karkat in a way that is probably meant to be sharp and disarming. Nobody dares to point out how relieved she actually looks.

“You smell just like the regular Shouty McNubs Bossman we love to have around the house.”

Kanaya takes one for the team and speaks up for her and Terezi, “I am glad you are okay, Karkat.”

Karkat slumps forward and hunches into himself, eyes looking away from everyone. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks for saving me. Let’s get out of here before the Dersite is chewed up by Skaia.”

“What?” you ask but Terezi is already grinning your way and suddenly everything flashes back to normal.

Karkat’s clothes are dry now. Weird. He still seems bent on taking a shower though because he’s starting to bluster his way out of the room but Kanaya is holding him back to give him a good long look over for any particularly worrying damage other than the visible small bruises on his arms and forehead.

It hits you that the concern on Kanaya’s face makes your stomach twist uncomfortably. When you look at the yellow and purple mottling Karkat’s arm, you realize why Rose sent you here. You really can’t stand the thought of Karkat just throwing himself into Derse to get banged up by goblins. Especially after the guy kind of saved yours and Rose’s asses. (Yours on multiple occasions fuck.)

Before you know what you’re doing, you’re speaking. “This isn’t happening again. I’m coming with you to Derse from now on.”

The look Karkat pins you down with is downright incredulous and you think his little brain is working into overdrive to find the proper meltdown to throw at you to convince you just how bad your idea is.

You aren’t disappointed.

“Are you out of your mind, Strider? Does the thought of death appeal to you? I can’t be fending for both a floundering idiot who can’t drag themselves out of Derse AND whoever I’m trying to save!” Ouch. He really went there.

“No listen,” you protest, coming up with an argument on the fly. You just really think this is what Rose meant. Your gut is telling you this is how things need to go. “No offense, but I’m a lot better in combat than you. All you need to do is clap a hand on someone and you can cut them out of Derse, right? I can watch your back and help you carve your way there and it isn’t like you have any other options because nobody else here can come and go from Derse except me.” Your head skips a beat. Hey wait. What.

Karkat’s started responding to you but you’re already pulling new conclusions out of the air.

“Wait. Shut up. Stop talking. How do you even get into Derse, you’re a Prospit dreamer.”

He turns bright red and avoids looking at Terezi or Kanaya as if what he’s about to admit is particularly scandalous. Terezi looks on with keen interest and Kanaya is narrowing her eyes down at him.

“I use my powers to make a connection with the person and then use them to rope me in.”

Kanaya’s voice is quiet but it cuts through the silence with ease, “And if they die?”

He shrugs flippantly but the tense cut of his shoulders gives away just how aware he is of whatever the consequences of this are. You wish somebody would actually sit down and fucking explain what’s going on with Derse and Prospit.

“You know what will happen if they die,” he mumbles.

Uh. Kanaya and Terezi do but you sure as hell don’t. You let it slide though because Kanaya and Terezi seem to ally immediately with you in response to Karkat’s revelation.

“Dave is accompanying you from now on.” Kanaya speaks as if she has lain down the law, as if this is not a decree to attempt to push or budge. Her word is final and Karkat doesn’t protest. Instead, he tiredly nods and leaves to take a shower or something.

A high laugh breaks the silence. You jolt and realize Vriska is leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest. You get the sense that she’s trying to look cool and kind of want to swipe her legs out from under her to show her how unsteady and uncool her stance is.

“We’re sending not ONE but TWO incapable bozos to serve as our representatives and heroes?”

Kanaya rolls her eyes and leaves. Wow, good for her. She’s really and truly above you all. Wait why was she talking to Rose? How did they even start talking?

Your meandering thoughts are interrupted by Vriska leering at you.

“You don’t even know what the extent of your powers are. How’re you going to be anything but a deadweight in Derse unless you have someone as experienced and wise as me to punch your powers out of you?”

“I think you’re underestimating the coolkid’s capabilities, Vriska. He has a sharp sword and everything!” Terezi says in your defense.

You… you don’t actually know what you’re doing in Derse though.

Surprising everyone, including yourself, you say, “Are you offering?”

Vriska gives you a weird look.

“Are you offering to teach me?” you clarify.

A wide smile cuts through Vriska’s face like a knife point, more grating than one of Karkat’s hot air lectures about the proper arrangement of the utensils in their drawer.

“Yes. I am offering.”

You shove your hands into your pockets real casual, about to show a class on how to actually be cool. As you breeze past her you nod slightly at her and say, “Cool, hit me up.”

Fucking spiderbitch.

  
She knocks three times on your room. Loudly. At six in the morning. You’re awake in an instant but relax when you realize it’s just Vriska scratching at your door. Goddamn. Part of you can hardly believe that you actually agreed to this shit.

“Get out of bed, Dave! We need to do this before Kanaya has to go to class!”

You shove your glasses onto your face, change into jeans and a loose sweater, and run your hands through your hair before swinging the door open.

“I was wondering how long it’d take for you to get this show on the road,” you say as if you’ve been waiting for her all day. Vriska bristles but doesn’t say anything. She stalks into the room and plops down onto the armchair by the bookshelves. Behind her follows Kanaya who is hopefully here to keep Vriska’s crazy in check.

Vriska claps her hands together as if she’s been looking forward to this moment since she was a dewy eyed kid entering kindergarten and dreaming of Hollywood. Knowing her, she’s probably dreamed of completely flipping someone’s life over instead of the normal things like becoming a teacher or getting married or whatever the fuck normal people think of when they aren’t worrying about their crazy ass brother stalking around the corner of the hall and getting the jump on them.

“Let’s get down to business before Kanaya has to leave.”

“Why exactly are you here, Kanaya? Not that I don’t appreciate your presence. I just think a stand up girl like you would have a lot more valuable things on your to-do list than babysitting a maniac and watching me try and fail to access whatever Knight of Time voodoo powers I’ve got buried beneath the seven layers of trauma and homoerotic fantasies covered only barely by the oddly disturbing image of a phallic puppet kind of jutting all impudent like in every brain corner bouncing inside me.”

Kanaya stares blankly at you while Vriska guffaws in the background.

“You’re as long-winded as Karkat!” Vriska cries. Wow, fuck her.

Ever polite, Kanaya ignores the weird shit you’re realizing you’re used to only throwing at Rose in favor of answering your question. “I am invested in yours and Karkat’s well-being and Vriska said my power to anchor myself and others to a plane of existence once I’ve entered may help facilitate your learning because you wouldn’t have to constantly hold her hand.”

You wince inwardly at the idea of holding Vriska’s hand. Damn, you really dodged a bullet there. Bless Kanaya.

“Also, I do not trust Vriska,” Kanaya adds. By God, bless Kanaya.

“Alright then.” You offer a hand to Kanaya and Vriska. “Let’s get started.”

Entering Derse is getting easier and easier. The world falls around you like a second home, just as hated as the first. You take in the dense knot of trees in the distance and the ravens etched into the walls of the ravine you all stand beside. Yeah, you pretty much hate this place like a lot.

Beside you, Vriska and Kanaya have released your hands and taking in Derse. You realize this is probably their first time here. Memories of the golden corridor Vriska pulled you into and the bright sky Terezi pulled you under come to mind. When you look up, all you see are dark grey clouds stretching forever into the horizon with the occasional purple lightning bolt scraping long spindly fingers to the ground. You wonder if Rose is in her gazebo sipping tea like it’s the most normal thing in the world to have a chat with Eldritch monsters.

Vriska’s appraising look takes everything in before she steps to a rock and drapes over it like she’s making this place her own.

“Prospit is less drab but whatever. Derse has no sense of extravagance.”

Whatever. You don’t care if the crazy broad prefers the sunstained blinding halls of Prospit. Kanaya, however, shivers slightly as she glances around.

“It is a little… chilly,” she observes. Maybe Prospit and Derse players just naturally prefer their own lands. You’d bring up the topic with Rose but you don’t actually care like at all.

“Dude what’s with your eye,” you say flatly when you get a look at Vriska and realize she’s got like seven more pupils floating around one. A chill runs down your spine. What the fuck. What the actual flying fuck. “Are you forreal some kind of spider bitch?”

Vriska sneers at you. “It’s just a physical manifestation of my powers.”

Kanaya pipes up then, “I thought you were powerless in Derse like most Prospitians.”

Vriska huffs, clearly annoyed by the implication that she’s weaker than you here, but doesn’t deny Kanaya’s claims. Huh. Now that you think about it, you’ve never used any powers in Prospit the few times you’ve been there. You guess Kanaya and Karkat are like weird special cases who can continue to do cool things outside of their planes or whatever. Unfair.

“Well?” Vriska demands, “Show us what you’ve got!”

“I can’t actually do much outside of slow down time.”

They both stare blankly at you for a moment before Vriska sprawls out across the rock. “Oh my god. You and Karkat are going to die.”

She straightens without warning, leaving you with the idea that she’s some kind of alien robot mix sent to freak everyone out stuck in your head. “Why don’t you just… try to do something.”

You shrug. It’s worth half a try you guess. It’s probably that there’s more to your power than slowing down time based off what you’ve seen. You spend five minutes just kind of thinking about time because it’s a pretty big concept. Maybe you can time travel? Are there rules to this kind of thing? What if you tried to make a paradox? Vriska gets bored of your mumbling though and lets out a garbled yell.

“How about you try like pretending to be a clock or something? Jump up and down. Do SOMETHING.”

“While I think the methods Vriska suggested are a tad ridiculous, I do think trying something new might be more beneficial than… this,” Kanaya chimes in because of course she does.

“Ok what should I do?” you ask pointedly.

Vriska only shrugs in response. “What motivated you to use your powers last time you used them? Just get into that mindset again.”

“I…” you start to explain. Images of your fight against Bro, of rushing to Rose’s side, of death looming over you surge to the forefront of your mind. “I was fighting, I guess.”

Vriska swings off the rock she’s sitting on in one fluid motion, stretching her arms ominously. “Well, you’re not fighting anyone right now but that can be easily amended.”

Kanaya turns away from her focus on the trees in the distance, stepping forward with a hand outstretched as if to stop Vriska.

“Vriska, don’t-” her voice cuts off and she stands stock still.

“Uh what,” you say.

Vriska pulls a sword seemingly from nowhere. Fucking dream world dynamics. You can already feel your pulse rocketing. You can already feel your body adapting to all the signs that someone is about to try to beat you down.

“A lot of people just take their powers as is but I practiced. I bothered Equius into taking me to Derse. I bothered Terezi into fighting me in Prospit. If anyone can get you to unlock your powers, it’s me,” Vriska declares, all exuberant cockiness. You hate her smug grin.

You try to exit Derse. You’re chaining Kanaya here and Kanaya’s chaining Vriska. Should be easy enough to send you all back. Something keeps you planted in Derse though. It’s not like shifting from one end of the pool to the next, it’s like trying to tug at a secured chain wrapped around you.

Vriska is smiling at you. “Kanaya’s keeping you here, Dave. I’m keeping Kanaya here. We’re not going anywhere.”

She levels her sword at you. She wants to fight? Easy. You’ve only spent the last 17 fucking years of your life fighting psycho egomaniacs like her trying to make you better. Trying to make you different.

Vriska surges forward without warning. You’re used to a level of speed higher than that and parry her blows easily. You’re not looking to kill though. This is just to unlock your power. This is just to help you. Bitch.

You step backwards and continue fending off her flurry of attacks. It’s almost too easy and you hate that he actually made you stronger. You hate that years of having your face grinded into the baking asphalt of the roof are paying off right now. She pushes you back and back but it isn’t hard. It’s like riding a bike. Easy. Natural. You’re in your goddamn element and you hate it.

A glint appears in Vriska’s eyes when you start to get the upper hand as your swords crash against each other over and over. For a moment, you think you see an unnatural glow light her pupils. Lightning crashes down right in front of you. You’re blown backwards. As you scramble to your feet, she crashes straight into you.

You teeter on the edge of the ravine. Holy shit. She’s crazy. She’s actually going to push you in and Kanaya’s definitely not going to be able to have Terezi pull you into her healing waters or whatever because you’re just going to be a mass of dead muscle at the pit of this ravine where your brother died (hopefully? fuck. you really hope so).

Panic shoots through you. It rockets from the base of your skull to your hands. You’re suddenly moving without thought. Everything slows down and you find it easy to move through time and space. You dart away from Vriska and then realize you’ve dropped your sword for some reason. When you look in her direction, she’s holding your sword now but she isn’t advancing on you. Instead, she’s grinning.

You look down at your hands and realize there are two red turntables shaped like cogs swivelling on the palms of your hands. They disappear as soon as you curl your fingers to form fists. Your heart is beating erratically. You hate her. You hate this. These shitty powers won’t come unless you’re thinking of your brother or dying or both. Fuck this. Fuck fuck fuck.

“Give me my sword back,” you demand, swallowing down air that leaves you parched.

Vriska passes you your sword like you’re friends. Like it’s easy. She talks like you’ve both accomplished some major fucking great task. Beside you, Kanaya is blinking like she’s just awoken.

“I’m not fucking fighting you again,” you say through gritted teeth.

Vriska laughs. “Lesson number one’s over anyways, Knight. We did it! Only place to go from here is up the echeladder of accomplishment!”

You turn on her. Furious. Frustrated. Impossibly impossibly angry. “No. I’m not doing this again.”

Kanaya pipes up now. “Did you _mind control me?_ "

“You were going to interfere with my lesson!” Vriska protests.

You throw everyone back into the real world or whatever the fuck this place is. As if Derse is any less real.

“Get out of my room.”

“Oh my god, you’re being so dramatic!” Vriska cries out, “I literally helped you.”

Kanaya starts for the door. “I think I will tell Terezi about your newfound powers.”

That seems to get to Vriska and she trails on Kanaya’s heels saying, “Hey that’s not fair! You’re tattle telling on me for _actually helping protect Karkat?_ "

Wow. You hate her. You hate this. You need some air.

A small part of you (who are you kidding, a large part of you) appreciates the irony that you’re pulling yourself onto yet another roof but instead it’s to escape a fight in your head than to enter an actual fight. You claw your way up to the roof using the vines you noted creeping up the side of the house earlier. When you lie down, all you see for miles is darkness. The stars haven’t come out yet you suppose. Or maybe light pollution is just That Bad.

The sky reminds you of Derse. Weirdly enough, you don’t mind it. It reminds you of Rose manipulating gods. It reminds you of the only real person you can say actually knows you. Fuck. You miss her and it’s only been like a day.

A sound sends you on alert. Terezi pokes her head over the edge of the roof. Blind Terezi can apparently climb up vines to rooftops with ease. Her powers must be crazy good. You remember Vriska saying something about fighting Terezi in Prospit. Sounds like hell.

“May I join you?” Terezi asks.

You shrug and then remember she can’t see you shrug from the angle she’s at and then remember that she maybe actually CAN smell your shrug from where she’s at and then you just think _Fuck it_ and say, “Hey, I don’t own this roof. The stars and the sky belong to everybody. This is a democracy after all. We all live under Karkat’s generous hand. He’s gonna be all Big Brother on us and’ll make sure we never have anything to want for. _Can_ you join me on this roof? Up to you, my dude. Don’t know why you wouldn’t want to worm your way up here and bask in my glum presence. Might be a buzzkill but you of all people might like it.”

By the time you fall quiet, Terezi has already sat down beside you and pulled her knees up to her chest. She doesn’t bother leaning her head backwards to feign looking at the sky with you and just kinda lets her bat eyes settle on the surrounding rocky hills stretching outwards from the house.

Neither of you talk. It’s almost nice.

And then Terezi says, “I heard about what happened.”

“Vriska’s batshit,” you respond.

Terezi nods without another comment.

You let yourself talk out loud because you’re only with Terezi and she’s been pretty cool so far for as long as you’ve known her.

“Would she have actually pushed me into the ravine?”

Terezi turns her head towards you, mouth opening to ask, “What ra-” before cutting off with a snap as if she’s pieced together the narrative in the second it took her to start to ask you. “Yeah. She probably would’ve and then she would’ve dragged you back to life and claimed it was an act of heroism.”

“Damn. Remind me to never agree to be in even remotely the same room as Vriska ever again. Can’t believe anyone would be that fucking crazy.”

Terezi is silent for a long moment. You think you can pick out the gears grinding in her head as she mulls over something. For all her weird madness, you think Terezi’s a lot smarter than she lets on. Kind of reminds you of Rose in that respect.

“What title thing do you have?” you ask.

“Me? Seer of Mind.”

Fucking seers.

And then, before you can go off on every comparison you can come up with between Rose and Terezi, she says with a sharp grin, “Heard you unlocked a cool power.”

You determinedly focus on the sky above even though you know Terezi can’t see you avoiding her face.

“Yeah. I guess.”

“Going to use it, you think?”

You hesitate to answer. Are you going to use it? You think you know the answer even though it might seem cowardly as fuck.

“No,” you breathe. “I don’t want to use a power that depends on me fearing for my life.”

Terezi doesn’t respond for a long time before finally cutting through the silence with a single sentence that you realize should’ve been obvious to you from the beginning.

“Vriska is the reason why I’m blind.”

 _Oh._ you think.

“Oh,” you say. “I’m sorry?”

She shrugs. “It was a long time ago and it was kind of my fault. She was just so… curious about Prospit.” Terezi breaks off to fiddle with the edge of her sleeves. “So I brought her with me and that was when her powers first awakened. She wanted to see Skaia, which is this bright guiding light at the center of Skaia. I didn’t. She forced me to. Now I’m blind.”

After a moment, she adds, “I’m alright with it. Because of it, I learned to expand my power so that it wasn’t just getting hints at people’s thoughts. I can shield my brain from her now and, somehow, I guess I’m kind of grateful to her because I now have this completely unique way of seeing the world.”

“Sounds fucked up,” you say.

She lets out a single, sharp bark of laughter. “Yeah. Yeah it was. But that’s not even my point.”

She tugs at your hand and you let her pull you into a sitting position. Karkat’s driveway is dotted with palm trees waving dark green fronds up at you. The night is beginning to get colder but at least some stars are peaking out of the darkness.

“What’s your point, Terezi?”

“Maybe Vriska is how I unlocked my powers. But they’re mine now. Completely mine. And I don’t know who I’d be without them. Maybe it’s the same for you.”

“Hey no. Fuck that noise. I never asked for cool powers or like Time responsibilities. I don’t need to be the goddamn time traveler to protect Karkat. A sword should be good enough to slice up some Derse monster skin. It’ll be a piece of cake. Like cutting a piece of cake. I don’t want these shitty powers that require having a mental breakdown everytime I use them.”

“Maybe,” she says, and your ears are wide open for any alternatives to your problem. “Maybe you don’t have to fear for your life to access them. Maybe your purpose for pulling them up is different.”

“What.”

“Think about it. Maybe they aren’t a reaction from fear but instead from a want to protect something or someone. Yourself. Your sister. And now Karkat.”

You think about it. Like actually think about it. Terezi makes you think in the same way Rose does. Always pointing out things you’d rather avoid or showing you parts of yourself you never thought to acknowledge.

You think of Rose hunched over her mom’s grave, voice clear but soft as she talks about her dead cat and her dead mom. You think of Terezi sitting next to you, obviously done with being angry with shitty people like Vriska for the shitty things they’ve done. You think of Karkat, bruised and battered after clawing his way through an unfamiliar land to keep some sweaty guy from dying. You think of Karkat watching you fucking _kill your brother_ and still pulling you out of Derse and dragging you back to his house for some fucked up reason. People like that get hurt. People like Karkat get hurt. You don’t want that to happen again.

They materialize in your hands without you realizing it. Huh. So your power can manifest outside of Derse. The turntables look exactly like the ones you used to use back in your apartment in Houston. You wonder if they’re still sitting there. You wonder if anyone is looking for some random kid and apartment owner who disappeared under the scorching heat of the Texas sun.

You think the turntables at your fingertips are actually kind of cool looking. Naturally, Terezi wraps her spindly fingers around your wrist and tries to yank your hand closer to her face.

“Let me get a taste of those shiny discs!” she says.

You yank your hand out of her wrist (damn she has a tight grip) and close your hands to make the turntables disappear.

“Gross, man. You shouldn’t lick a dude’s pair of discs.”

“Dave,” Terezi says and you can see her eyebrows wiggling, “Was that an innuendo?”

“No and I’m not giving you the birds and the bees talk, Terezi.” You start making your way back down the roof and then pause before climbing down the vines.

“Thanks for this, Terezi. Seriously.”

She just smiles at you.

  


You’re in the kitchen a few weeks later, marvelling at how quickly you’ve gotten used to food just being around, when Karkat plops his ass down in the chair next to you.

“As much as it pains me to bow my head before you now and crawl to you with my hat in hand and my nose shoved into the pavement, I need you to come with me to Derse.”

You shovel a mouthful of offbrand Crunchy Pebbles into your mouth. “You’re really cheap on the cereal, aren’t you? Also why are we going to Derse?”

He rudely ignores your comment on the cereal he buys. Probably because he’s the only one in the room right now that has a job and like, actual money. Why is this guy just paying for you to bum around? Is he just used to this because of Terezi?

“This girl I know, Nepeta, wants to hang out in Derse with me. I need you to go.”

“I thought I was only needed for like last minute life or death shit. Haven’t you gone to Derse before on planned visits?”

He turns bright red. “Yes… well… Things are getting more dangerous nowadays and, based off of what Nepeta implied, Equius would not be accompanying us. So- It would only be the two of us. And… well… You’re just a very capable fighter…” Realization dawns on you.

“It would only be the two of you if I didn’t go?”

Karkat nods. You imagine him like a robot slowly lowering and then lifting its shitty head with its poor elbow joint of a neck.

Around the cereal sloshing in your mouth you ask, “Am I fuckin cockblocking for you?!”

“Aughhhhh,” Karkat wails, burying his head in his arms on the counter, “Nepeta is like a little sister to me and Derse isn’t super safe right now and yes! You caught me! It would be very nice if you came along. In fact, maybe it’s the least you can do considering you shmooze off of me like a parasite and then complain about the quality of the cereal I buy as if you have any cash to complain with. So maybe you should just buckle up and do this _one_ thing for me. _Thank you very much._ ”

“Alright, alright.” He’s actually right about the shmoozing part and you kind of feel bad for pointing out the quality of the cereal now. “I’ll thirdwheel for your date with your sister.”

“Was it really necessary to word it that way?”

“Yes. When’re we leaving?”

“We’ll probably head out tomorrow morning and get back around 2 in the morning tomorrow.”

And this is how you end up on a seven hour drive with Karkat.

  


You pop your feet up on the dashboard and lean the chair as far back as possible. In the driver’s seat, Karkat scoffs and flicks your ankle with his fingers.

“Get your dirty shoes off my dash. I’m not your chauffeur and this isn’t a vacation for you. If you need to stretch your noodle legs out, the seat can back up.”

“Remind me why we’re driving?”

He gives you a scathing look surely meant to burn through your thick skull and vaporize your brain. “Kanaya is very helpful but she isn’t just a walking teleportation device. I don’t like to bother her when I don’t have to.”

“Are you guys like… a thing? She seemed pretty concerned about you yesterday.”

“What!? No!” His instant reaction gives you more than enough information. His dark eyebrows screw up in the center of his breath and you swear he’s about to blow a lid at the very mention of he and Kanaya being a possible item. “Kanaya is like- She’s like the nosiest older sister you could ever have. I love her but not- not that way. Gross. Gross. Not to mention she’s a hopeless fucking lesbian!”

Oh crap. She’s a lesbian. You feel bad for everytime you privately thought she was hot.

His disgust has been replaced by a smug smirk as he looks you over now. “You had a crush on her, didn’t you?”

“Uh.”

“Believe it or not, I’m kind of an expert on romantic matters, Dave, and your blush could be visible from Mars even though half of your face is being covered by those gargantuan pieces of trash.”

“You? An expert on romantic matters? Karkat, you’re hardly beating back the crowd of ladies edging for Vantas territory with a stick, are you? Let me guess, that crowd has a population of 0.” It occurs to you that you _are_ accompanying Karkat to cockblock his date with some kid he thinks of like a sister. Does this guy just adopt people left and right? Fuck. Have you been adopted by this guy even though he hates you?

“Dave, I have studied the way the heart works across many stories and time periods. There are no strings I do not know of that can be pulled. There are no secrets. There is only the uniting image of Love, Actually beside Ten Things I Hate About You on a shelf. There is only me. Bow down to me, bitch, for I am Eros sent to relearn what it means for two people to fall in love and conquer all the obstacles between them.”

“Sounds like a load of horseshit but this explains the goober books and movies littering my room. Your tastes are worse than my friend John’s. At least he has the decency to enjoy things like the Ghostbusters instead of gay chick flicks.”

He gives you a weird look before reaching over and turning on the radio. “Shut up, Dave. You don’t know what you’re talking about and hearing you spout anymore of your ignorance might make my ears bleed.”

A popular song comes on. You crane your neck to look out your window. It’s just miles of empty space and open road, so unlike the dense maze of Houston. You would have never thought that you liked this kind of open space. You used to think you were comfortable in the cramped space of the ten foot by ten foot room you grew up in.

With full confidence that your shades are covering your eyes, you sneak glances at Karkat while he mumbles lyrics beneath his breath and focuses on driving. He’s not what you expected either. Funnier. Kind of cute. Wait, fuck, what was that? Abort that thought, toss it out the window. Not important. He’s just got a kind of charm like John did when you first met him. Maybe you can be friends.

“What _are_ Kanaya’s powers anyways?”

“She’s a Sylph of Space. Pretty influential shit. Draws her power from Prospit and it’s pretty damn amazing what she can do. Outside of Prospit, her presence can anchor someone in the same plane of existence as her. It’s why I thought to keep you around. Within Prospit, Kanaya can heal pretty much any physical wound and teleport people she’s got a bond with anywhere.”

“Oh so she has a bond with me now? Weird.”

Karkat’s face screws up.

“That’s actually just something I did with my bond powers.” He doesn’t explain further and turns up the radio volume, signalling the end of that train of conversation. You mull it over. So Karkat has weird bond powers apparently. Kanaya is basically a Space fairy. You wonder if Rose has more information on their powers.

A sign passes down the side of the road.

“Dude, pull out at the next exit. I gotta take a whizz.”

“Dave, the amount of manners you have sometimes convinces me that you were homeschooled by an insane monkey who didn’t know what social standards were.”

It’s not a bad way of summarizing your childhood.

“That’s not a bad way of summarizing my childhood.”

Karkat is switching lanes and nearly jerks into another car as he glances toward you. They honk once and he glares at them as they pass.

“What? You really were homeschooled?”

“Not exactly. I raised my own damn self. You won’t believe the amount of shitty viruses I got on my computer when I was scrolling through math lessons before I learned to install filters on the damn thing. My Bro had the kindness to teach me how to read at least. He used to write some disturbing children’s books though, instilled a deep fear of puppets and horses in my kid mind.”

You pause as you unbuckle your seatbelt. Karkat is just fiddling with his keys. “It was kind of funny looking back, I guess.”

No, it wasn’t.

“That doesn’t sound funny, Dave.”

Yeah, alright.

It’s now that Karkat finally gets out of the car to refill the gas. You dart into the gas station to recover because holy shit, your brother’s dead and you’re still finding out the amount of bullshit he put you through was never ending. You make short work of pissing and then spend ten minutes washing every inch of your hands like you can distract yourself from thoughts of your brother by turning your fingertips into shrivelled raisins. By the time you shut off the water, you’re cool again. You adjust your sunglasses and get a good look at yourself in the mirror. You’re fine.

When you leave the bathroom, Karkat’s paying for something at the counter so you just slip back into the passenger seat. The door jerks open and you look over in time for Karkat to drop a barrage of snacks on the seat. He grabs two bags at random with a hand and they crash into your face after a well-aimed throw.

“Here you go. Eat your pain out and forget your shit childhood.”

You pick them up and stare down at the bright orange of the packaging so unlike from the blues and reds of your childhood Doritos, a staple of the Strider household.

“Dude. One. There is no pain; I’m fine. I’m a grown boy now. All independent and smooching off some rich kid with weird magic powers. Two. How the fuck are cheetos and pork rinds going to be enough to pull out the sadness crashing within me? I’m going to need a good cathartic session of crying over romcoms and shovelling ice cream down my gullet to cure this kind of trauma.”

He snorts. Cute. (Not.) “Whatever, Dave. When are we switching?”

“...switching?”

“Like driving.”

“Dude, I can’t drive.”

“What.”

“I never learned. I literally just told you about how I self-educated myself on math, you think I had the opportunity to find someone willing to teach me to drive for free?”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. “I- fuck. Get over here then! You just found someone willing to teach you for free.”

Karkat is… a surprisingly competent teacher. You slow down time slightly when you’re on the road to make things easier on yourself but he doesn’t need to know that. After the day with him, his loud voice isn’t grating and his instructions aren’t actually as demanding as you originally framed them to be. Within an hour or so, you’re driving with only a few minor corrections from Karkat occasionally. (Stay in your fucking land, Dave. Holy shit I almost had a heart attack when you nearly swerved right into that fucking car. I think everyone driving within a quarter mile of us hates this car and hates you in particular because you’re so shitty at this.)

After about two hours of slowed down time, you’re done with this and ask Karkat if he’s willing to switch over. You pull into a drive through and order lunch before switching seats. Once your stomach is pleasantly full with Pepsi, fries, a burger, and a shitton of cheetos, you lean your chair back down from the angle Karkat set it at and tuck your sunglasses into the front of your shirt.

“G’night, Karkat.”

“It’s the afternoon, idiot,” he mumbles but doesn’t bother you when you fall asleep.

You wake up an hour or so later. Karkat is muttering quietly under his breath. You listen as he turns the music lower and feel the car swerve slightly for some reason. When you hear Karkat mumbling about how you hoarded all the drinks on your side of car out of reach like the selfish stain on society that you are, you feel a smile pull at your lips before you sit up and stretch dramatically like you just woke up.

The car dips down, falling into a small pothole, and you realize Karkat must’ve been avoiding them while you were asleep. Huh.

“You thirsty for anything?” you ask, reaching down to grab a juicebox by your feet.

“Can you pass me a grape juice?”

“Hell yeah, man. More apple juice for me.”

You stab the straw into the box and pass it over to him before taking a long sip of your apple juice and practically draining the thing in one go. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch the intense focus with which Karkat narrows his eyes at the road ahead, a crease forming between his eyebrows and his curls flopping forward onto his forehead.

You crumple the now empty juice box and toss it into the trash bag Karkat brought along. As you stare at Karkat, a part of you tries to find a word to describe him. He looks… nice. You guess. He has nice eyes and his perpetually pissed off nature is becoming easier to deal with. Instead of spending more time itching to draw Karkat because you’ve just realized you’re probably out of practice (like actually draw him, not sketch him with a gaping porkchop mouth and bulging eyes), you flop back down onto your inclined lounge chair, roll onto your side, and focus on your breathing, trying your best to ignore the weird energy buzzing in your fingertips and how your mouth feels dry even though you just chugged a kid’s six-ounce lunch beverage.

Outside, on the passing road, the green signs pass by one after the other, bringing both of you closer and closer to your destination.


	7. Litterboxes and Timeloops

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing Nepeta = Impossible.  
> Too many cat puns had to be shoehorned into her speech.

Karkat drives deep into the nicer parts of town. The rickety suburbs fade before the city and the countryside you’d grown familiar with settle into the familiar rise and fall of skyscrapers. San Francisco’s towering apartments bring something rising to your skin, itching to escape. Your idle hands itch for pencil and paper, now more than ever. Time away from your music and your art has made you different.

He pulls into an apartment complex. It climbs up and up, story after story, and you don’t bother careening your head backwards to catch a glimpse of the top. You’ve spent enough time staring up at looming buildings. There’s something about the city that makes you feel more like yourself though. There’s something about knowing you know a place without ever even having to live there. A city is a city in your mind. San Francisco is New York City is Houston.

You stand taller here, body prepared for the things you’ve grown up with. Karkat takes the lead and drags you into an elevator. He jabs the elevator buttons over and over with his finger as if he can hurry the elevator doors into closing. Your apartment’s elevator never worked so you had to take the stairs every time. The ground lurches beneath you and you both stand together in silence, watching the numbers tick up.

You break the silence first, never one to let a dead horse rest.

“So are we pretending to date? Want me to casually lean all over you? I can be your crazy boyfriend, babe. Hot piece of shit like me can definitely guard you from your little sister’s advances.”

The look of disgust that Karkat sends your way is enough to make putting your foot in your own mouth worth it.

“You are to shut up and be a human body present to ensure that this doesn’t ever look like a date. I want you to purse your lips and keep them shut. Adopt the role of a monk who has taken a vow of chastity and silence. There will be no sarcastic remarks from you, no unnecessary jabber that fills my entire worthless being with rage, and no rambling mumbles that only ever work to dig yourself and everyone within your vicinity into a hole of awkward pauses that implores everyone within it to dig their own intestines out of their throats and use them to strangle themselves if only to escape the trainwreck of a mouth you possess.”

You wrinkle your nose. “Gross, dude. I get it. Be still and quiet. I will be the king of playing dead. We will Weekend at Bernie’s this shit. I will be the hot corpse in the sunglasses waving at all the passing people, controlled by your invisible hand. Your will is my command and I will move as you see fit. Everyone watching will be kind of confused by how this came to be, but you and I will know that when I was buried under the fuckton of words you spout over issues like how tightly pursed my lips are, I died and then revived as your mute puppet.”

“For a mute puppet, you’re awfully noisy. I feel like I can never get any peace from your constant chatter.” The elevator dings and the doors slide open into a hall of warm, yellow lights and geometric green-patterned carpets. You follow behind Karkat as he stalks down the hall and stops in front of a door labelled “12.”

He pounds on the door and it swings open to reveal a slight girl with hair cropped short wearing a loose sweater that has sleeves hanging halfway down her palms. A chorus of meows greet you and you glimpse behind her to see the apartment is swarming with cats. She’s practically a crazy cat lady minus the smell of old people and loneliness hanging over everything.

“Kar-cat!” she exclaims distinctively enough that part of you can just tell that was a pun. She throws her arms around his shoulders and pulls him into a hug that he falls willingly into. Something like a smile flickers over his face and, for the first time, you see him as a kid and not the obnoxious asshole housing you and working like seven jobs. “I’ve been looking furward to seeing you all week!”

When Nepeta pulls back, you think you can make out a light dusting of red over Karkat’s cheeks. “Yeah, yeah. It’s been a while since we last met. I should’ve visited earlier when Equius let himself get dragged into Derse. Where is the guy now?”

Equius must be the Sweaty Hulk.

“Equius was pawsitively bashful about your esclawpade. Fur a while, he was mewserable with shame and inhissted that his behavior was apawlling, but I managed to coax him out of the apartment.”

“Inhissted?” you ask.

Nepeta looks at you for the first time. “Insisted!”

She pins you down with a focused stare and says, “Nepeta’s tail twitches as her nose sniffs at the unfurmiliar purrson standing befur her. She stalks up to him and clawtiously bats a paw at him befur asking Karkat, ‘Who is this furiend, Karkitty? Will he pawssibly be accompawnying us in our excursion into Derse?’” The puns were already getting out of paw but the roleplay sets her definitively in the crazy cat lady category. You mean hand.

“Dave is a new Derse player and I thought he might benefit from being around other Derse players He’s kind of a shitty person but he’s good with his sword, I guess.” Kind of a shitty person but good with a sword? Definitely a Strider. Haha. That actually wasn’t funny at all and you scrub it from your mind like a mother shoving soap into her son’s mouth. There’s no place for unironic foul-mouthed jokes in this household.

“I’ll have to set a mew place for him at the table but come in already and have some chameowmile tea!”

She ushers you into her home and you look around and can see that, yep, she is actually a crazy cat lady. As is mandatory, a wide eyed cat grins down from you where a clock normally is with a timepiece embedded into its belly and its plastic tail swinging back and forth. Four different cats immediately rub up against you and, while Karkat navigates them with ease born from experience, you nearly fall face first and crush several kittens.

“It would be furry mice of mew to take your shoes off, please!” Nepeta calls as she heads into the kitchen. You toe your converse off and then take a seat at the table she’s laid out. The doilies somehow have little cats cut into them chasing even tinier little mice.

“She seems… mice,” you say and Karkat lets out a groan.

“I should’ve warned you about the cats. And cat puns. And— uh... Nepeta in general. She’s the nicest person you’ll ever meet though!”

Nepeta returns carrying another teacup and doily and sets them down before reaching across the table to poor each of you a drink. The cats around have abruptly stopped cuddling up to you and our now off doing their own thing, climbing scratch posts and lounging on cushions.

“I saw some mewntains in Derse purrlier hiss week and thought we clawed map them! Equius is stubbornly refusing to enter Derse fur a while.”

“So do y’all just chill in Derse together for no reason? Just hanging out with giant crows and dark gods whispering creepy things in your ear? Is it the landscape or the air? I don’t want to say the air is cleaner even though there are no cities because I swear a smog hangs over everything in Derse.”

“Nobody in their right mind would willingly ‘chill’ in Derse, Dave,” Karkat says, exasperation dragging his tone. “Nepeta and Equius have been mapping Derse for me while Vriska and Terezi map out Prospit.”

“Oh cool, maps? Can I check them? See your masterful artistry? Maybe add a monument of my own here and there. Do that thing you do on Google Maps where you zoom real close into a friend’s house and bother them and say, ‘Look it’s you. That’s your home’?”

Nepeta brightens, “Do you like drawing too?”

It takes effort to keep a straight face. Drawing is a bit of a stretch for what you normally do. “Absolutely.”

She digs up the maps from a bookshelf and lays them out for you. Some of the places have names like “Cat Scratch Cove,” or “The Great Litterbox,” while others are named weird things like “Mountains of Fortitude” and “The Herculean River of Strength.” You pinpoint the forest where Rose’s gazebo is, appropriately named “Furest of Lights,” and track through it to land where the ravine is. Your finger stops tracing the page, stuck on the place where you pushed Bro.

“Do you know that place?” Nepeta asks, “We haven’t chosen a name fur it yet if you want to think of one.”

You swallow, your throat very dry for no reason.

“Don’t need to think about it,” you hear yourself say. “That’s the End of the World.”

You shake yourself out of it and hand the paper back to Nepeta. She happily inks in your choice while, across the table from you, Karkat is staring at you intently. You avoid his gaze and gulp the tea down, not caring that it was hot or tasted like old leaves.

  


You regret agreeing to this when you find yourself under a baking Sun surrounded by dunes of white sand towering over you. The Great Litterbox turned out to quite literally be a great litterbox of sand. In the distance, mountains cut into the sky and Nepeta has been energetically taking the lead.

Ahead of you, Nepeta is pulling Karkat along by the hand, bounding with endless joy. Apparently you’re supposed to get to the mountains and then chart a route through them to the unexplored other side.

An hour or so later, you’ve managed to drag yourself to the entrance to a cave system entering the mountain without incident. God, you hate this. You hate this and you aren’t even doing your real job properly. Nepeta has been attached to Karkat by the hip for the last entire time you’ve been here, chatting about the things in her life and prodding him about his job. He doesn’t seem adverse to answering over even holding her hand, but your whole deal was to thirdwheel the fuck out of this date for him.

Something flips in your stomach when you see the way Nepeta insistently tugs at Karkat’s arm or brightens whenever he makes a passing comment. It’s weird. Karkat is weird. It doesn’t help that the heat has forced him to sling off his sweater and now he looks like a completely different person. Like an actual person.

You feel off because of how different this place in Derse is compared to your usual place. You’d never stopped to wonder just how large Derse was yet here you are in a completely different climate.

When you enter the cave, it branches into several caverns. It’s easy to randomly pick one and go with it and all of you set off down the third branch while Nepeta marks it down on a piece of paper.

The stalactites hang low and you feel like you’re entering the gaping jaw of an ancient creature. All around you, sediments have built up to form strange formations that glitter when you shine the flashlight Nepeta handed you onto them. It’s when you reach a narrow overpass that the lot of you stop and have to separate. Karkat goes first, leaving you, for the first time, alone with Nepeta.

“Is something wrong, Dave?” she asks, idly watching Karkat curse as he crosses the bridge one foot in front of the other. Wrong. Is something wrong?

“What do you mean?”

“My clawspect is Rogue of Heart. I have a feline that not all is well. You seem… sad.”

Sad. You aren’t sad. What would you even be sad about?

“So… Karkat? He seems cool. A cool guy for a cool girl like you. Kind of a little too abrasive and loud though. He doesn’t remind you of like? Sandpaper? Or nails on a chalkboard?”

Nepeta rolls with your obvious topic change and glances fondly back at Karkat. “I know he only purrceives me as a little sister. I like him though. I think he is a someone worth liking.”

“He’s kind of a jackass though.”

She lets out a giggle. “Karkitty is all bark and no bite. He’s a cat you need to wait for, not a dog you should avoid.” Karkat clears the bridge and I duck out of the conversation to start across the bridge. Poor girl seems to think Karkat’s got a bigger heart of gold than a mouthful of shouts.

You can’t deny you’ve come to at least respect the guy when he reaches out to you to help you across the bridge and asks, “You alright?”

“Am I enjoying my time as your third wheel? Hardly. I’m the spare tire you keep in the back of the trunk, lonely and forgotten. It’s so dark back here. Please, Karkat, don’t leave me to drown in the dark. I need attention or I’ll die.”

He flaps his arms with a scowl. “Alright, alright. Shut up, I get it. I’m sorry and I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

And then, under his breath, “Not like I don’t feed and house your sorry homeless ass.”

“Oh my god. Fine. This is the start of me making it up to you because of my existence, Karkat.”

He frowns but doesn’t retort as he helps Nepeta off the bridge next. It strikes you as funny that the girl who is beaming in front of you has a crush the size of Texas on the boy with a permanent frown etched into his face.

The three of you continue onwards and you strike an easy conversation with Nepeta when you start talking about the furry (that you definitely created ironically to please Jade). Karkat occasionally breaks in to call you both weird idiots who should appreciate their place in the food chain but you don’t mind the rhythm he adds to the conversation.

Your footsteps begin to ring louder in the caves, bouncing off walls that have grown impossibly far away. When you swing your flashlight around the room, the light becomes a distant beam and fades into the darkness. Rose would love this place.

A strange squelching sound reaches your ears before Karkat and Nepeta notice, too busy dissecting the romantic politics of their friends. You reach out and tug on Karkat’s arm.

“Shut up for a second about Sollux’s weird platonic romance with the ghost babe haunting him.”

“You were listening?!” Karkat screeches, but you just shove your hand over his mouth to silence him.

The sound reaches all of your ears. Beside you, Karkat rasps out, “ _Shit,_ ” and you jam your hand over his mouth again.

This was why he needs you around. You’ve got skills that are perfect for Derse. You hate it. You hate it. You hate it. But you listen, like you’ve grown used to when you can’t see your opponent, when there’s sweat dripping into your eyes, when you’ve fallen and haven’t been able to leap up to your feet yet.

“Stay here,” you say.

“Like fuck I will!” Karkat cries but you’re already darting into the darkness, sword slotted into your hand.

You’ve fought one-handed before. It’s easy enough to lug your sword in your left hand and wield your flashlight in your other. The uh _thing_ comes into view beneath the glare of your flashlight. It lets out a strangled scream in response to the light and lurches towards you. It could almost be considered fast if it weren’t for the strange black goop dripping from its nearly humanoid form. Its feet lift off the ground with that sound you heard, almost like a suction cup popping.

It’s fucking gross.

You stab it. Because obviously. But your sword just slides through it like it’s thick jello. Gross. Gross. Gross. When you pull your sword out, it’s covered in the thick goop.

You swipe again and, this time, you think you feel your sword glance off something before it’s moved through the slime. Did you mention it’s gross?

Before the core thing can move into another part of the slime, you start hacking away. You don’t even have to try hard because the thing is so slow and, after enough hits, the goop is sloughing off its sides in big chunks. Karkat, panting, appears beside you, followed by Nepeta.

Nepeta takes one look at it and suddenly her hands are wrapped around yours and Karkat’s wrists. With an unexpected amount of strength, she pulls you away and the three of you start running.

“Why are we running, Nepeta?”

“Beclaws mew can’t kill that! It’s just a mass of negative emotions clawstered in one being!”

Well, you’re stupid.

Karkat is ever the voice of mercy and says exactly what you were thinking, “Your stupidity continues to amaze me, Strider. And if you’d waited for us instead of rushing in like a sacrificial idiot, you wouldn’t have spent ten minutes lobbing your sword at a liquified mummy.”

“Hey, it’s like a video game. You see a crappy, poorly animated monster, you stab it. I’m a master of strategy: just keep grinding. No time for rest. No time for plans. Just keep stabbing and grinding and levelling up until your foes are bowing at your feet as you crush their skulls into the ground.”

Nepeta stops you both and directs your attention further down the cave. “Look!”

Up ahead, light is filtering into the cave from an outside source. You did it, you found an opening and charted a way through this endless darkness of nothing.

Karkat turns to Nepeta, “I guess this is where we leave you. How much time has even past, Dave?”

“It’s three o’clock right now. If we leave, we can get home by 11.” It takes you a beat to realize Karkat is LITTERally using you as a clawck (haha.)

“Aw, it’s been mice to see you, Karkitty!” Nepeta mews and pulls Karkat into another stranglehold. He looks kind of dorky struggling to get out of her vice grip and you allow yourself an internal smile because you’re cool like that.

When she finally releases him, Karkat only looks mildly annoyed and put-off. For all her youth, Nepeta has a good read on Karkat. He’s just like a cat.

“Let’s get this over with,” Karkat grumbles and lifts his hand slightly as he focuses on Nepeta. Before your eyes, red ties seem to appear around Nepeta. Their threads twist away from her and stretch back the way you came. One by one, they fade away and, from the ground, new roots grow upwards and twine themselves around Nepeta’s feet.

“What the fuck kinda tentaporn did you just subject my eyes to,” you ask. Karkat bristles. Obviously.

“Unlike _you_ , I actually use my powers, Dave. I just moved her spawnpoint away from the desert so that she and Equius can explore this area together. Honestly, Dave, I’ve got a use but it seems like you have none. Did training with Vriska help even slightly? I’m pretty sure the combination of her ingratiating nature and your frustrating inability to accomplish anything should’ve caused that entire mess to blow up in our faces. I should give Kanaya a goddamn medal for surviving that bullshit idea you two agreed on.”

You scoff. “Did Vriska help me? Fuck no. She’s a crazy spiderbitch and I don’t know why I agreed in the first place.”

“Amen to that.”

“However,” you summon the two red discs you’d fascinated over with Terezi. “...talking with Terezi did help.”

He doesn’t reach to touch them like Terezi did. Instead, he and Nepeta gaze at your turntables for a long moment with something like sadness in their eyes.

“Hey, what’s up. I just revealed cool cogs that pop out of my hands and y’all don’t even seem perturbed. Well, actually, you look kind of put out by them but not in the congratulatory, ‘Wow, Dave, congrats on becoming a God. Can’t wait for you to figure out whatever the fuck those do and manipulate all sorts of cool things.’”

“They remind me of a friend,” Karkat says, voice soft and remorseful. “Try giving them a spin, Dave. Maybe you’re a time traveler like her.”

“Uh-” you hesitate. “Right now?” His shift in attitude throws you off. How Karkat can exude so much guilt and then flip back into a demanding and bossy acquaintance is mind boggling.

“Yes, dumbass.” He rolls his eyes. God, this guy is confusing.

You give them a turn and everything shifts.

  


Time swerves past you. You’re only a concept here: an idea of an idea. The swoops and dives of time spill themselves outwards and you trace them with the ease of someone who has memorized the map. It feels natural. Easy.

As you trace the line of time, you feel a notch at a point. It’s like a beacon, a call for you to follow it. You answer the call because you want to and part of you knows you have to. It sucks you in and spits you out in a hallway in Rose’s house. There is none of the nausea of transporting, none of the pain or aching or uneasiness. Jumping through time feels like breathing. Instinctively, you know that you’ve gone a year into the past.

“Hey. It worked,” you mutter beneath your breath. What’s the game plan here? Are you here for something? Maybe you’ll just check the place out. Snoop in Rose’s room if she’s not around. Maybe you should avoid people. That’d probably be best. Can’t be changing the future or something, right?

A harrumph interrupts your thoughts as someone behind you clears their throat. You turn, and there is Rose with perfectly outlined lipstick and a spine set straight as a ruler. It’s only been a few days since you last saw her but you miss her already. Caught red-handed. Turntable-handed. Time travelling. Did you just fuck up time by letting Rose see you? A part of your brain insists that everything is alright and, since most of this shit has been instinctual, you just roll with it.

“So,” you say in greeting, “I guess I can time travel?”

“Is that what this is?” Rose asks. “Not an elaborate prank orchestrated by John’s hand? I wouldn’t dismiss the idea that he would raise the funds to drag you all the way to New York from Houston as completely outside the realm of possibility. After all, he has gone to great lengths to prank his friends before.”

It occurs to you that, timeline wise, this is the first time Rose has seen you in person. You should probably make a good first impression so Past Dave won’t suffer. “Rose, this isn’t a prank.”

“I certainly never thought _you_ would entertain antics like this though. Really, Dave, given your penchant for irony, I suppose I should have expected this. The claim that you can time travel is a little absurd. Was that John’s idea? I don’t know what he gave you to convince you that I would ever believe such a notion.”

“Rose,” you repeat, “this isn’t a prank.”

She shutters to a stop, takes a long look at you, and then drags you into her room muttering about her mom lurking in the shadows and how she can never get any privacy in this awful household.

Maybe you can say hi to Mom before you go.

Once the door has shut, you both stand facing each other. You feel like you’ve been given some shitty assessment but the test isn’t in the form of a long list of bubbles that kids complain about but instead a stare off wherein Rose drills into you and tries to parse out how you’re here just by looking at you.

Or at least, that’s what you think Rose is doing up until she pulls you into a tight hug.

“It is nice to meet you, Dave,” she mumbles into your ear.

“Yeah,” you respond and awkwardly pat her back.

“Now tell me how you arrived here because, given my recent findings on my mother’s research and the discovery that you are my brother, I am inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt and take your words at face value when you insist this is not a prank and mention the possibility of time shenanigans in the works.”

You laugh and Rose looks startled by the sound. “God, yeah. So many time shenanigans.”

You step out of the hug and summon the turntables you’d used to get here. “I’m a Derse player, Rose. You called me a Knight of Time.”

“You’re from the future?”

“Yeah, flying cars and everything. We’re all bumping into each other on the sky roads and screaming at each other with these metal implants that let you telepathically communicate with others. Except they made the implants have too far of a range so now I’m constantly hearing the thoughts of like everyone within a billion mile radius all the time. It’s nice to get a break from the noise. Sarah was really broadcasting how upset she was about her coffee that came back cold and I couldn’t handle it for another moment.”

“Dave, you look like a teenager. Technology must have developed at a miraculous pace for what you say to be true.”

“Oh wow. I’m Rose and I like to sarcastically rebuttal my brother’s claims. I call into question their validity by stating facts that can’t be true,” you say mockingly. “I’m actually only from a year in the future. Technology isn’t going berserk but a lot has really… changed. Good changes. Some uh bad. But a lot of good. The world is still pretty shitty actually but my life’s a lot better thanks to you.” Anxiety buzzes at the root of your ribcage when you barely avoid mentioning Mom or Bro or the shit you’ve gone through. You refocus on the good, on Rose standing before you smirking all coyly like your floundering is the most amusing thing ever..

You force yourself to say what needs to be said, “Speaking of thanks. I never did thank you so I guess I’ll do that now. Consider this a uh- preemptive thanks to you and a belated one on my part.”

Rose’s smile widens, surprisingly genuine and warm. It’s good to see her this way without extreme shadows beneath her eyes and a grim set to her mouth. It’s good to see her happy.

“I haven’t the slightest clue what you’re thanking me for but I will accept this thanks with great magnanimity and will hopefully live up to whatever standards you have now set for me.” She gestures to her bed and takes a seat on her desk chair. You’re reminded of every typical therapy session on TV when Rose leans forward and says, “Sit. Tell me everything.”

You lie down and prop your feet up over the edge of the bed so your shoes won’t stain Rose’s sheets. “Jeez, doc. Life’s been tough. My wife left me for another man and now I’m having these disturbing dreams where he’s standing in my windows beckoning me into this twisted maze outside my home.”

“Dave, as thrilling as it is to hear about your subconscious dreams about men luring you away to navigate the complexities of your sexuality, I meant for you to tell me about your powers.”

“I can’t. Spoilers. Isn’t enough that you know that I can time travel? You’ll find out about all this stuff later.”

“And if I was meant to learn from your visit?” Rose insists. 

You turn onto your side and stretch your hands above your head. “Haven’t you already, Rose? I know you’ve been reading about Derse for a while. It’s all real. You were right.”

She’s silent, staring into the distance as if the space above your head will reveal the answers to all of her unspoken questions. She’s probably got a million thoughts jumping around her head right now and begging to be spoken. It’s just like her to leave you waiting as she picks out what she wants to say.

“Could you take me there? Derse?”

You sit up and think of Mom, who was dragged away, of the monsters lurking in the shadows of Derse waiting to entrap Rose in a fucked up game of metaphorical chess where she’s somehow both a pawn and a player. There’s no way in hell that you’re going to encourage Rose to venture into Derse before her time.

“You’ll get there eventually, but it isn’t safe for now. Promise me you won’t wander ass backwards into Derse. I’ve seen… shit.”

“It’s surely not as bad as you paint it to be,” Rose mutters and you cut her off by reaching forward and squeezing her hand.

“Promise me, Rose.”

She heaves a sigh, pained by the limitations you’re putting on her curiosity. You can deal with an annoyed Rose though. An annoyed Rose is a billion times more preferable to a dead Rose.

“If it means so much to you, I promise.”

A voice from the doorway interrupts your conversation, causing you to jolt in your seat. You hadn’t heard the door creak, hadn’t heard the floorboards move. Growing up with your brother, you’ve been able to detect whenever anyone approached You took pride in it. Your hyperawareness has saved your skin and helped you dodge corners in Karkat’s home.

But Rose’s mom is here and she didn’t make a sound until she spoke.

“Roseyy! You didnnt tell me you were havung guests!” She claps her hands together and the alcohol in her martini glass nearly sloshes over the edge.

Unlike you, Rose has not batted an eye. She turns her head, slow and deliberate, to level her mom with a flat stare as she says, “This is my friend. Dave.”

”Hi.” You wave with a weak smile. “I’m Dave Strider.”

“Wow! A fascinatingh naem for a faschinating person!” Yeah, she’s definitely been hitting the bottle. Or drinking from the bottle. Whatever it is called when someone has been drinking way too much hooch before 2 o’clock.

“Will yuo be styaying for dinner?”

Rose’s smile is strained as she looks over at you out of the corner of her eye. “No, he was just leaving.”

You want to protest. You want to stay and see what it’d have been like had you grown up with Rose instead of with a psychopath. You want to meet your goddamn mom. But Rose says it definitively and you can feel in your heart that, yeah, it really is time for you to go.

Mom pouts a little before taking a sip of her moonshine. “Alright, honey.”

She disappears through the doorway and Rose lets out a long groan. “Did you see how much she was mocking me? I can’t believe she’d drink right in front of a friend!”

You think of the horrorterrors, of how they whisper to Rose and pull her in. Maybe you’d drink too if only to block out their whispers.

“I guess this is where I leave you, Rose,” you say. Standing up and dusting off your jeans as if there’s anything to dust off. You hold out your hand as if to end this tearful reunion with a formal handshake but Rose, for once predictable, pulls you into another hug and you’re grateful that you know to hug her back this time.

“Will I see you again?” Rose asks after pulling back. Images of shattered glass and Mom lying on the floor, still as stone, comes to mind.

“Yeah. The me from your time too. Speaking of me, you should probably expect a message from me at some point. I need your help.”

Maybe you could tell Rose about what to expect. Maybe you can help prevent Mom’s death. Something keeps you from doing so though and, instead, you summon your turntables, look up to Rose, and say, “Don’t try this at home,” before spinning them and losing yourself into the flow of time for the second time that day.

You hope Rose will be alright. You know she will be. She has to be.

Your plan is to rejoin Karkat in natural time like any regular time traveler does, but another notch in time calls to you. You’ve got all the time in the world, literally, so you stop and pop out on that side of the timeline.

You’re in Karkat’s house, specifically the hall that leads towards the kitchen. The scent of pancakes calls to you. Somehow, you know around what time this is. You’ve gone back from your natural time and landed yourself in the household when you were staying with Rose. You’re about to enter and demand pancakes when you hear Terezi’s voice, soft with worry that you’ve never heard before. You don’t know who she’s talking to, but the moment sounds intimate, like something a time traveller shouldn’t be stumbling headfirst into.

“You alright?”

You’re simultaneously surprised and unsurprised by the voice of the person who responds to her. Low and raspy, like the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance, Karkat sounds tired.

“Yeah, I’m fine, Terezi. Everything is a-ok. Except I woke up this morning to make pancakes and we didn’t have any fucking eggs. Am I the only asshole in this household who is idiotic enough to waste time in a grocery store? Has my addled brain tricked me into believing that food is a necessity? Or is it more likely that you and Kanaya simply don’t have the common courtesy to leave me a few eggs so I can eat some chewy pancakes.”

You slip behind the door, hidden from view.

“It’s okay for you to mourn him, Karkat. I’m sorry that you’ve had to take on so much responsibility since he’s… gone away.”

“‘Gone away’ is the most horseshit euphemism I’ve ever heard. He passed away. Cronked out. Kicked the bucket. He’s dead. It’s fine. I’ve been just fine picking up after the train Vriska steered straight through my china shop of a life, Terezi. I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I miss him too, Karkat. Do you remember that diner he used to take us to?”

Karkat sounds pained now. The bite and anger that he normally infuses his words with leak out and are replaced by an almost pleading tone. “Terezi, I really don’t want to talk about this right now.”

She’s silent before sighing. “Alright. I’m sorry.”

“I have to go buy eggs now.” The clatter of keys on a marble counter reach your ears and you press yourself even more firmly against the wall behind the door.

“Flowers are on sale at Walmart,” Terezi calls out.

Karkat stops a pace away from the door. So far, you’ve gone unnoticed in your hiding place behind the door. He doesn’t look back at her, doesn’t even acknowledge her words. Instead, he marches on and leaves the house without even slamming the door.

As you watch him leave, you are reminded of his expression when he looked down on Mom’s body. You’re reminded of the soft tone he used to comfort Rose and offer support to you. He looks… sad.

The door you’re behind swings forward and Terezi peaks over the side at you, a single eyebrow raised into her hairline. She gives you a long sniff.

“You smell… different, Dave.”

”I uh- I’m from the future.”

She smiles and the expression nearly cuts her face in half with how sharp it is. “Welcome to the past then, coolkid.”

The way she says coolkid sends shivers down your spine. Part of you wants to go to ask her about Karkat, but you hold your curiosity back. That’s his shit. You’ve got yours and he’s got his and you don’t want any of your shit mixing with his shit in an awful shit mix chocolate milkshake.

“I can’t tell you anything if you’re going to ask about Karkat,” Terezi declares, effectively taking the decision to humiliate yourself off the table. “But I can tell something else is on your mind, Dave.”

You side eye her behind your glasses but you know she can’t see that whether or not you’ve got sunglasses on. Maybe you shouldn’t talk to her. Then again, this is Terezi, not Rose. Terezi wouldn’t do you dirty by accusing you of suppressing gay thoughts for a kid that you’re starting to hate a little less.

“Suppose there’s a guy that you originally pegged as kind of an asshole. And rightly so too. Except lately he’s been appearing a little less… assholey so you want to maybe become friends with this guy who has definitely saved your life and also maybe your sister’s…” You trail off. Fuck. Maybe you owe Karkat like… a lot?

“Dave! Focus when you’re in court! You are angering the jury with your incompetence!” Terezi cries out and you can almost imagine her banging a gavel against a podium.

“So this guy is also convinced your asshole even though you aren’t one even slightly. How am I supposed to get him to… reassess his judgement of me?”

She gazes at you thoughtfully for a moment.

“As your prosecutor-”

“I thought you were the judge.”

“Shut up! I am judge, jury, and executioner, Dave. I am the law. And as the law, I would like to put forth evidence in favor of the judgment that it will be difficult for you to crack Karkat’s shell.”

She leans in closer and you kind of wish you had stepped out from behind this door instead of staying back here like a coward while she blocks your exit.

“You did murder someone, Dave.” Your mind blanks. Fuck. She knows. How the fuck does she know? She’s going to turn you in. You’re going to have to spend your life behind bars eating chili and making toilet wine. You feel yourself beginning to hyperventilate and miss the rest of what Terezi says.

In the midst of struggling to convince yourself that breathing is something you’ve known how to do your entire life, Terezi clamps an iron grip around your wrist and drags you out into the open. Her hand is like a manacle. This girl could drag you to jail on her own.

Her voice finally reaches your ears, “Dave! Dave! Nobody blames you.”

“What?”

“I am a Seer of Mind, Dave. I Saw your Mind.”

“If nobody blames me and Karkat is still letting me live in his house, then why is he such an asshole to me?”

Terezi is quiet for a second. “He just needs some convincing, but I promise you that being an asshole is just his way. We aren’t just suddenly okay with murder, Dave. It’s a pretty big deal in the law.”

You can hear the panic edging into your voice but you speak anyways, “So what’s my sentence, Judge Pyrope? Execution?”

“I declare you…” she drops her face close to yours and, if you didn’t know she was blind, you would swear that she was somehow looking straight through your sunglasses and into your soul. Fuck. She’s a Seer of Mind. Maybe she really is doing that. “...guilty of surviving.”

She pulls back.

“Uh,” you say.

“You can leave the courtroom now. Leave your fear of us behind too, Dave. I don’t care about your past offenses. I can smell the goodness all the way down in your bones.”

It’s a weird thing to say. Oddly reassuring. You almost wish she was right. You almost wish you could believe her when she proclaims that there’s some good left in you yet. Karkat is probably right to dislike you. What if you end up just like him?

Terezi gently nudges you.

“Go back to your time, Dave. It’ll be alright. I promise.”

You follow through and, when you pop back into existence a few feet away from Karkat, you look up and realize that maybe Karkat doesn’t entirely hate you. For now, you’ll have to take Terezi’s word for it when she says that Karkat will come around eventually.

“Anything change while I was away?” you ask.

Karkat snorts. “Don’t you know what a time loop is? You probably just completed a few paradoxes.”

  


You’re thirty minutes or so away from home when Karkat pulls off the road and exits into a small town. He drives the streets like he’s been here a million times and his thumbs tap against the wheel as he hums the song that’s playing on the radio.

He parks in the parking lot outside a diner. A neon sign in the window flickers faintly, declaring for the world “Open 25/8!” You feel kind of bad for the employees that have to work the graveyard shift here because the stench of weed is strong in this parking lot and you know this is the exact kind of place kids would go to to shoot the shit and break glass bottles.

You follow Karkat without comment as he explains to you, “This is one of my favorite restaurants.”

Inside, a cheery hostess greets you and leads you to a booth. Everything is greasy from the menus to the seats. The smell of french fries and apple pies and America hangs over everything. You flip through the menu and see a load of typical American comfort food. There’s almost too many choices to pick from. That’s not a problem though. After all, you’re seated across from the most opinionated person alive.

“I’ve actually never… been to a restaurant,” you admit. “Could you order for me?”

Karkat’s eyes widen over the rim of his menu but he nods. When the waitress returns, you don’t pay attention to what Karkat orders but instead take in how comfortable he seems here. He smiles easily at the waitress and relaxes into the cushions of the booths like they’re home.

After the waitress leaves, Karkat looks over at you and the smile fades from his face as he narrows his eyes at you.

“Normally, I wouldn’t bring you here. But I’m craving a taste of home after spending so long with Nepeta. If this place offends your delicate sensibilities, you can wait in the car.”

You raise your hands in mock surrender, “I’m not judging. It’s been a long day and we’ve definitely spent too many hours cooped in that car together without any room to stretch our legs.”

“I was perfectly fine. You’re the one with inexplicably long legs and an inability to drive. How was it having to curl yourself up like an aluminum can in a trash compactor?” Wow, you really hate short people sometimes. Whatever. If Karkat can look past defensive murder, you can look past snide remarks on your height.

“What’s with Nepeta and Equius anyways?”

“Oh god. Equius is a hulking bastard that doesn’t have any concept of boundaries but you have to admire his devotion to making sure Nepeta doesn’t die in Derse. I can’t stand the guy for more than an hour, I don’t know how Nepeta does it. He’s always talking about some shit about classism. Not that Nepeta’s any better with her obsession with forcing cat puns into every fucking sentence.” Karkat’s dedication to slandering Equius and Nepeta could be considered admirable if it weren’t for how obvious it is that Karkat enjoys talking about his friends.

While he rambles on about Nepeta, you take in the warm light of the light bulbs hanging over you and the music playing over the speakers and decide you like this place.

“Honestly, Nepeta’s crush on me just makes me feel more embarrassed because it reminds me of the nauseating crush I had on Terezi.”

You were content to listen to Karkat ramble but now you _have_ to interrupt.

“You and Terezi aren’t… already a thing?”

Karkat turns bright red. “What? Fuck no! I thought you two were actually about to start dating or something and was going to unhappily watch from afar as that wreck of a relationship took a turn for the worst and crashed into a local children’s hospital.”

“We wouldn’t be that bad together…” you mutter.

He reaches across the table and grabs your hand. Firmly, without any doubt in his voice, Karkat declares, “Terezi will chew you up and spit you out.”

Luckily, that is when your food arrives and Karkat lets go of your hand. Karkat’s ordered for you a club sandwich of some sort while he’s gotten a stack of red velvet waffles.

“Dude, can I try those?” you ask. Karkat shoots you a look before sighing in defeat. He reaches over and switches your plates.

“Can’t say I don’t plan on coming here a billion times again in the future. You can have them,” he explains when you stare at him as he bites into the sandwich.

You both eat in silence for a while, enjoying your meals. You think you’re beginning to like freshly cooked meals a lot more than toaster pizzas and Doritos.

Karkat finally breaks the silence when he says, almost to himself, “Terezi and I wouldn’t have worked out either really. I think I’m better off without a mess of crushes because all I ever attract are desperate people like Eridan who should really just reexamine themselves before trying to throw themselves at every person that happens to be nice to them… Holy shit. Maybe I’m an Eridan.”

The way he talks about this Eridan guy makes you think Karkat’s insulting himself now.

“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself. You seem pretty decent from my point of view.” You pop one of the fries that came with the sandwich into your mouth before vaguely waving your fork in his direction. “But also yes. Reexamine yourself. Because you’re also a pretty big asshole from my point of view. You’re a decent asshole.”

With mock incredulity, Karkat says, “Wow! A genuine compliment from Mr. I-Lied-About-My-Name-When-We-First-Met over here! I’ve been given a blessing from a god himself. I should immediately prostrate myself on the ground to thank this god for finally allowing Dave to say something semi tolerable!”

“Damn. Can’t a guy compliment a guy without getting scorned for it?”

He fixes you with a Look. “That was hardly a compliment, Dave. You spent more time calling me an asshole than actually complimenting me.”

Surprising both yourself and Karkat, you say, “Fine. You’re an alright guy, Karkat. Not just anybody would help me out like you did. Don’t despair over being an Eridan because you could still meet someone willing to be your it girl.”

It’s almost worth it to be that sincere if only to see the expression on Karkat’s face as you’re sure he’s internally torn over whether or not he should yell at something or try to disappear.

Ten minutes later, after Karkat’s settled on shouting at you about heteronormativity (holy fuck, he’s gay?) you find yourselves swinging back and forth in an easy conversation. Nearly two hours later, when Kanaya texts Karkat asking him if he’s alright because you both should’ve arrived home a while ago, you leave the diner with the sense that you kind of wish you could’ve stayed a while longer.

The last thing you think as you fall asleep that night turning over thoughts about Rose and time travel and Karkat’s distaste slowly melting away is that maybe Terezi was right. He isn’t so bad.


	8. And Every Countdown Begins Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/22: Unedited/reviewed. Will probably be reread and slightly fixed here and there by the end of this week.  
> God, this chapter took years to finish. I started it and then scrapped it a few times and then there were a few times where the characters just took off and went on tangents and I lost control of the train before righting it. Thank you for keeping up with this if you've made it this far! We're halfway done! :D

The strawberries are doing well in the greenhouse despite being planted out of season. With the hot California sun bouncing its UV light through the glass frames above you, Karkat has long found it easy to manipulate the amount of shade each plant he’s growing receives.

You gave up on helping Karkat about thirty minutes ago when he decided you weren’t checking for pests and weeds well enough and have now resigned yourself to sprawling in the dirt and eating the fruit of Karkat’s labors while he rants about the latest dumbass who waltzed into his workplace and didn’t understand the difference between almond milk and cow milk.

“She had the _audacity_ to threaten to get me fired!” Karkat rants. “As if I had poisoned her!”

You absentmindedly hum a note to signal that you’re listening to him before reaching for another strawberry. He slaps your hand away from it with a quick glare, barely slowing his roll as he got more worked up about almond milk.

“I wasn’t attacking her for — stop that — her crippled stomach and its inability to process basic enzymes. I was just offering her an alternative, but she couldn’t get it through her head that almond milk _is not the same_ as regular milk. How do you go through life without understanding that almond milk isn’t actually milk? What kind of airhead waltzes from coffee shop to coffee shop demanding custom beverages without ever understanding the alternatives available to them? Customers like her make me want to pull my intestines out and tie a noose around their throat so that we both die on the spot, putting me out of my unending misery and ridding the face of this planet of grinches who can’t understand when someone’s just trying to do their goddamn job.

“Everyone would bow down and praise me as the newest trendsetter. Suicide by murder of bad customers. The service industry would be revolutionized if I could find the guts to — PUN NOT INTENDED, STRIDER — just punch an awful person and blow their teeth straight into the backs of their esophaguses.”

With all his additions and responses to whatever he expects you to say, you might as well not be here, but you think he genuinely likes having someone around to listen and nod so you reach for another strawberry and listen and nod.

Dirt scatters everywhere when Karkat violently drags a weed from the dirt and tosses it in your general direction. It misses by a few feet.

“Stop eating all the goddamn strawberries! They’re Kanaya’s favorite.”

At that, you promptly decide not to ever touch the strawberries ever again both because Kanaya is a very kind person who deserves her strawberries and also maybe slightly because she scares the fuck out of you sometimes. If Karkat is the president of this household (which you never agreed to, what kind of democracy is this), Kanaya is the intimidating First Lady or Secret Service agent who can snipe you from two hundred yards away with a single glance.

Karkat cuts off your mumbles as you cross your heart and swear to die stick a needle in your eye by grabbing onto your shoulder and dragging you forward.

“What. The. Fuck.”

After steadying yourself, you follow Karkat’s wide-eyed gaze to the entrance to the greenhouse. Stepping through the doorway is your reflection, white-haired and sporting a torn shirt and dirty jeans. Dried blood stands out starkly against his brow and runs down his right cheek. The plain relief on this beat-up alternate version of you is almost painful to witness. In what world (time) would you let yourself twist your face into that expression?

He crosses the greenhouse and locks eyes with you. He nods in acknowledgement of your presence. You nod back. Something in you reverberates with the certainty that this version of you is from the future.

He finally stops in front of you with a fist held out. You bump it good naturedly because you're not about to leave a bro, let alone the ultimate bro (yourself), hanging. 

“Hey, past me,” he says. “Aren’t we the coolest motherfuckers in the building.”

“Karkat probably can’t even handle the amount of cool in this room,” you deadpan back.

“Damn right. So cool that all the irons in every fire are frozen down to chunks of ice. Karkat’s unflipped shit has instantaneously ceased burning as the amount of rank coolness we bring to the immediate area skyrockets. Sorry, Mom, we say. If you can’t handle the frostbite, get out of the goddamn kitchen.”

Before you can respond, a bellow from Karkat rises and rises in volume, interrupting the both of you with one unceasing yell. You both turn to face Karkat as he twists himself up in a knot and pulls at his hair. From the corner of your eye, you see the set of Future You’s shoulder relax and a smirk that doesn’t quite feel sarcastic breaks onto his face.

“SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP!” Karkat yells, swinging a finger accusingly between you and other you. “Why are you here, Future Strider? It’s bad enough that I have to deal with _one_ of you, I thought you’d be considerate enough to _never_ subject me to _two_ of you! Even Aradia had the good sense to not force her friends to keep track of multiple versions of her at the same time.”

He jabs his finger at other you with a snarl. “Are you really so sadistic and masochistic that you’d force both of us to have to interact with each other more than the given timeline allows? Is your life so empty you feel the need to spend more time participating in meaningless assbackward conversations with yourself? I feel like I’ve caught you jerking yourself off to your own image and it’s the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had the misfortune of unwillingly stumbling into.”

Future/Other Dave honest-to-God laughs before wrapping his arms around a sputtering Karkat in a pseudohug. Your entire brain stops thinking and you stand frozen beside the spectacle in front of you.

“Karkat,” he says, and his voice is dripping with a warmth that makes you think you should leave the room. “You cannot imagine just how fucking glad I am to see your scowling mug in a peaceful room.”

He steps back while Karkat sputters. Karkat’s face burns as red as the strawberries you’ve been stealing and he’s gasping for air like Future You has managed to really and truly leave him speechless. If you didn’t know better about Karkat’s tendency to overexaggerate his dramatics, you’d think he’s having a stroke.

Then again, you (Future You) _just_ hugged Karkat. Maybe you imagined it. Maybe _you’re_ having a stroke.

Except Future You is leaning down to peer at Karkat with a smile spreading on his face.

“Dude, you’re so fucking dramatic sometimes. Can you chill for like fifteen minutes? I need to talk to you about something and it’s kind of important.” He straightens to pin you with his gaze, “Also, I think I vaguely remember giving myself a heart attack just about now. Sorry about that.”

“Uh,” you say, “don’t worry about it. You look like you survived it just fine.”

A wheeze escapes Karkat before a single pained, “Fuuuuuuuuuuck,” is dragged out of him. His voice comes back full force afterwards though.

“Dave!”

A chorus of “Which Dave”s are thrown in Karkat’s face and his left eye twitches.

“Present Dave,” he grits out. “Stay here and take care of the goddamn strawberries we’ve been slaving over. Other Dave, come with me because I can’t handle listening to your inane time steeped conversations or two of you in the same room.”

“I don’t get to hear about my quirky adventures with you as my sidekick? Future Dave isn’t going to sit me down and tell me about what it was like when he was my age?”

Your protests fall on deaf ears as Karkat waves a meaningful finger at you and drags future you out of the greenhouse. Future Dave doesn’t move to release Karkat’s grip on his arm and even walks comfortably close to the guy like the both of you haven’t spent the last forevers of your shared past years growing up tracking the space between you and other people and planning the best way to add more space if a sword is swept up in your direction.

Something in your gut twists at the closeness they have. You think it’s discomfort. A small but loud part of you insists the feeling is something different and you think you’re more uncomfortable with those feelings than with other Dave catching up to Karkat and swinging an arm around his shoulders. Their steps match in length despite how much taller you are and you _know_ that Karkat isn’t the one changing how he steps.

You slide your eyes away from them before they even reach the back door. You’re here and you will be there someday and maybe, by then, everything will make sense. For now, you look through Karkat’s strawberries and try your damnedest to pick out every weed that had the audacity to worm its way into this place.

Thirty minutes later, you’re wiping dirt off of your hands onto your jeans before stepping back into the Vantas house. You creep up the stairs, sneakers silent on the wood floors as you hold your breath and strain your ears in the hopes of overhearing your own voice. Is future you even still here?

At the top, pale skin and bone-white hair greets your gaze but it isn’t your own. You stop behind her.

“Rose? When did you get here? And why? Is Karkat throwing a party without telling the rest of us? Inviting my sister without the proper permi- _oomph_ ” Rose crashes into you. Her arms wrap tightly around you and her head is heavy on your chest. You’re about to ask _what the fuck she thinks she’s doing_ but then you think you can feel her shaking so you bring your arms up and try to figure out how hugging works.

People really have been springing the hugs on unexpectedly lately, you absentmindedly note as you wait for Rose to break out of you. She doesn’t say anything though, doesn’t even make a sardonic remark about how a sincere hug must be grating on your ironic sensibilities. The hug stretches on for an uncomfortable length of time, definitely longer than any hug you’ve ever had before. (Have you hugged before?)

It’s Karkat’s voice that breaks it up. Rose draws back from you as Karkat rounds the corner.

“Rose, I got you some towels and set you and Jade up with rooms…” he trails off when he looks up from the towels he’s got stacked on his arms to catch sight of you and Rose. Rose has her arms wrapped tightly around herself and is doing everything to avoid both of your gazes while you feel like you’ve been caught doing something wrong. Is affection a sin because it sure feels like one.

You don’t have to say anything though because Karkat’s eyes latch onto you and, as the three of you stand in complete silence, red rises up his face slowly but surely. You stare at each other for a few beats and your tongue appears to have twisted itself into a knot because you are incapable of asking Karkat what the hell is wrong as his eyes bug out at you.

Maybe future you was weird. Maybe he told Karkat some embarrassing secret about something you haven’t even gone through yet. What the fuck do you have to hide and why would you talk to Karkat about it of all people?

Or maybe he caught you hugging Rose. God, that’s weird. Can’t a guy hug his sister? Why does Karkat have to go and make it fucking weird?

A strangled cough finally escapes Karkat. He lurches forward as if compelled by puppet strings and shoves the towels in his hand onto Rose who looks like she has no clue what is going on right now.

“These are for you,” Karkat declares, his voice flat and his face scrunched like he’s trying to force it to be devoid of emotion and failing to hide how uncomfortable he actually is. Without another word or even acknowledgement of your existence a few spaces away, he about turns and stalks off.

“That was weird,” Rose comments blandly.

You don’t turn to look at her, too busy replaying the last few minutes in your mind as if you can pinpoint what the fuck went wrong and caused Karkat to freeze up like a broken video game.

“Yeah…” you think you reply before snapping out of your trance. “Wait, why are you here? With towels in your hands and a room apparently?”

Rose clutches the towels tighter to her chest. “Apparently, I live here now.”

Because Rose can be a bitch like that sometimes, instead of explaining and choosing not to leave you floundering in confusion and disarray, she strides past you and turns the corner of the hallway, presumably to ask Karkat where her room actually is.

  


The music pumping through your headphones clicks over itself off-beat and you can’t seem to pinpoint where the jolt in the cut is. Your room is stuffy. You keep the window shut tight when you aren’t swinging out of it and managed to thrift thick curtains to cover the window when you’ve decided to slip out. The room has also quickly become crowded with miscellaneous stuff you’ve picked up. A few small fossils Terezi and you picked up while hiking are scattered on top of the books stacked in the bookshelves lining the wall. You’ve collected quite a lot more clothes that have found homes littered across the ground and occasionally shoved into a pile in the corner.

Your most prized possession is the simple turntable set Karkat and you dug out of some backwater hardware store that bought and sold used shit. It’d been barely functional and remains far worse than the ones your Bro got you (you refuse to go back to your apartment), but Karkat, the everyday handyman that he is, managed to fix it up with some help from Sollux. Lots of help from Sollux. You probably would have gotten the turntables fixed a lot sooner had Karkat and Sollux not spent half their time working on it arguing over FaceTime while Karkat tried and failed to figure out what parts Sollux was referencing. Also if you had asked engineers to fix it rather than a couple of programmers who think writing some shitty code makes them qualified to piece together a disaster.

Still, in the end, you got a device for mixing music and a crappy laptop dug up from the depths of the early 2000s to do it with and that was all you needed. You click play and listen to the song play again. It’s always so satisfying to finish a first draft of a song, almost as satisfying as listening to the final version for the first time. Although some details need some fine tuning, the overall ideas are there and you can focus on clarifying the music than actually creating it now.

You’re starting on the process when a ding interrupts you. And then another. And another. Pesterchum blinks annoyingly at the bottom of your screen. With a sigh, you click it open to see grey text covering your screen. No surprise there.

carcinoGeneticist  [CG] began trolling turntechGodhead  [TG]

CG: DAVE, GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE. DINNER IS SERVED AND IF YOU DON’T GET HERE IN FIFTEEN MINUTES, I’M FEEDING YOUR PLATE TO THE GARBAGE AND YOU CAN DIG IT OUT WITH YOUR HANDS BECAUSE I’M NOT YOUR PERSONAL CHEF READY AND WILLING TO SHIT OUT PLATES OF FOOD FOR YOU WHENEVER IT IS MOST CONVENIENT FOR YOU.  
CG: WHILE YOU’RE DRAGGING YOUR SPINELESS SELF DOWN THE STEPS TO THE KITCHEN, GRAB HOLD OF YOUR SISTER TOO. I HAVEN’T SEEN HER IN A MILLENNIA AND A GOOD HOST DOESN’T STUMBLE ONTO DECAYING CORPSES A MONTH AFTER LETTING SOMEONE STAY IN THEIR HOME. DESPITE YOUR SISTER’S GOTHIC HUMOR, I WOULD NOT APPRECIATE A DEAD BODY IN MY HOME.  
CG: DAVE? ARE YOU THERE? YOU BETTER NOT BE IGNORING MY MESSAGES BECAUSE I WILL CERTAINLY GO THROUGH WITH MY THREAT AND THEN GO UP THERE AND SQUEEZE GOLD FROM YOUR THROAT IN AN EFFORT TO GET SOME FORM OF PAYMENT FOR THE HOURS I SPEND SLAVING AWAY OVER MAINTAINING THIS HOUSEHOLD.  
CG: CHECK YOUR FUCKING MESSAGES, DAVE. DON’T MAKE ME REGRET NOT INSTALLING A SELF-DESTRUCT DEVICE IN YOUR COMPUTER.  
CG: DAVE.  
CG: I’M GOING TO MURDER YOU, STRIDER.  
CG: CHECK YOUR PESTERCHUM. I KNOW IT’S BLINKING DOWN THERE. THAT COMPUTER CAN’T DOWNLOAD A LATER VERSION OF PESTERCHUM SO THERE IS NO MUTE FUNCTION. GET DOWN HERE AND BRING ROSE BEFORE I DO ACTUALLY BECOME YOUR MAID AND BRING YOU YOUR FOOD.  
CG: I WILL GO UP TO YOUR ROOM AND SMASH YOUR FACE INTO THIS PLATE OF SPAGHETTI. I WILL CRUMPLE YOUR SUNGLASSES AND USE THEIR BROKEN LENSES AS GROUND UP PEPPER FOR MY NEXT MEAL.

He’s typing some more empty threats so you cut in while you still can.

TG: dude chill  
TG: i know you probably have a hankering to get a cut of the strider action but ive gotta make time for my music or my charm will fade away  
TG: everything that gives me my essential dave striderness charm will be turned to dust if i dont have my music  
TG: so that craving for some dave conversation time that youve got filling you up will become a moot point if you start demanding my attention every time i get into the zone  
TG: i cant be at your beck and call karkat  
TG: im my own man and if you really love me youll let me go  
TG: thats from a song so it must be true  
CG: YES, DAVE. EVERYTHING YOU’VE EVER HEARD IN A SONG IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT THE COLD, HARD TRUTH. UNDENIABLE AND FOOL-PROOF. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO UNIVERSE WHERE ANYONE WOULD EVER EXAGGERATE OR EVEN LIE IN A SONG. FICTION DOES NOT EXIST, ONLY FACTS SUNG IN HARMONY WITH THE BEATS OF A PIANO.  
TG: i feel like youre being sarcastic right now karkat  
TG: like youre doubting the integrity of lil wayne and snoop dogg  
TG: is that what youre doing karkat  
TG: are you doubting how completely factual and true the things i learn from songs are  
TG: do you dare imply that i am foolish for putting my faith in those who have never led me astray  
CG: OH MY GOD. YES. I DO DARE. PLEASE SHUT UP. I FORGOT HOW INSANELY LOW YOUR IQ DROPS WHEN MUSIC IS INVOLVED. THE CONVERSATIONS WE HAVE SOMETIMES ARE SO EMBARRASSING. I PROMISE YOU THERE IS ENOUGH MATERIAL FOR TEREZI TO CONDEMN US TO THE WORST OF PUNISHMENTS.  
CG: NOW CAN YOU *PLEASE* REFOCUS AND, FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, BE GENUINELY USEFUL AND FOLLOW THROUGH ON A MINOR REQUEST THAT DOES NOT ACTUALLY BENEFIT ME AT ALL AND, IN FACT, ACTUALLY BENEFITS YOU AND YOUR KIN?  
CG: CAN YOUR TINY BRAIN HANDLE MY SIMPLE COMMANDS, DAVE? CAN YOU RETAIN INFORMATION? PLEASE PAY ATTENTION AS I EXPLAIN TO YOU HOW TO GO ABOUT GETTING SUSTENANCE TO MAINTAIN YOUR HOPELESSLY FRAGILE MEAT BODY.  
TG: dude what am i doing  
CG: I LITERALLY EXPLAINED LIKE SEVERAL PAGES UP JUST SCROLL UP. HOW MUCH OF A LAZY IMBECILE ARE YOU. I PUT IN THE TIME AND EFFORT OF MESSAGING YOU AND YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO IGNORE MY MESSAGES OR PAY NO MORE ATTENTION THAN IS NECESSARY FOR A GOLDFISH TO HOPELESSLY SKIM A PHYSICS TEXTBOOK THE NIGHT BEFORE A TEST BEFORE GIVING UP.  
TG: why do you make everything a federal fucking issue  
TG: why dont you just send me some quick and short bullets on what exactly you want me to do instead of rambling about my inability to do the thing for ten years  
CG: YOU ARE THE *WORST.*  
CG: JUST. BRING ROSE AND YOURSELF DOWNSTAIRS FOR DINNER.

You start heading down the hallway to pick up Rose, your phone ringing after Karkat types out a particularly magnificent follow up paragraph. She and Jade settled into their own rooms a week or so ago and Jade has already started helping Karkat support the amount of people in the household. The guy insists on keeping his many part time jobs despite his inheritance and the influx of money he’s received though. You think he likes having something to do on weekdays and something to complain about on weekends.

CG: SEE? I AM PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF BEING SUCCINCT. IT’S JUST THAT I FEAR THAT USING TOO FEW WORDS MAY CONFUSE YOU ON THE DETAILS SINCE YOUR BRAIN IS SO SMALL. NOT TO MENTION YOU MAKE IT DIFFICULT TO SAY MORE THAN THREE WORDS BEFORE YOUR EXCESSIVELY IDIOTIC REBUTTAL IS TYPED AND SENT.  
TG: “I AM PERFECTLY CAPABLE OF BEING SUCCINCT” you say and then ramble for seven years again.  
CG: CHOKE AND DIE, STRIDER.  
TG: classy  
CG: FUCK YOU.  
TG: whats dinner  
CG: IF YOU WERE EVEN REMOTELY CONSIDERATE, YOU’D KNOW TO SCROLL UP FOR THE ANSWER.  
TG: cool spaghetti is great  
TG: any aj?  
CG: I ACTUALLY DID TRY MY HAND AT MAKING IT SOME AND I DON’T THINK IT’S HALF BAD.  
TG: ill be the judge of that  
TG: after all im the ultimate aj connoisseur  
CG: STOP SUCKING YOUR OWN DICK. I DON’T NEED YOUR APPROVAL TO KNOW THAT MY APPLE JUICE IS THE BEST SHIT ON EARTH. YOUR OPINION IS SIMULTANEOUSLY MEANINGLESS AND WORTHLESS, DAVE. IT APPALS ME THAT YOU WOULD EVER THINK OTHERWISE.  
TG: i have so much to say in response to that but i gotta go  
TG: might miss dinner because of all this dick sucking im doing bye  
CG: WHAT.  
CG: DAVE, GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE AND EAT THE DINNER I SLAVED OVER.  
\-- turntechGodhead [TG] is now an idle chum! --  
CG: YOU ARE A BLIGHT ON THE FACE OF HUMANITY.

The door shuts behind you with a muted click. The chaos that has swept through Rose’s room could be considered breathtaking. There is no sense or logic to it and you don’t exactly know where to even begin looking for Rose here. Notes and post-its coat an entire wall, some sheets of paper hanging ajar and others obviously crumpled and then smoothed out again. You don’t know where she got the pins to stab the papers to the wall.

Littering the floor are countless more sheets of papers. Frantic doodles and shaky handwriting covers them. An assortment of pens and sharpies are scattered aimlessly in the mess as if Rose simply tossed them around in an effort to make a writing utensil always within easy reach.

The bed is piled high with Rose’s unhanged laundry. Half-finished yarn pieces are draped over the edge, her knitting needles somewhere in the pile. It takes you a moment to finally find her huddled on her side beneath the blankets. Her pale fingers are tightly wrapped around the neck of a bottle. Upon closer inspection, you catch sight of a few more bottles glinting beneath the bed. Watercolor grapes stand out on the glass bottles’ labels but you’re pretty sure Rose hasn’t been chugging grape juice.

“Rose, please tell me you’re not comatose,” you manage to say as you pick your way to her bed.

The springs creak beneath your weight and you surreptitiously shove some of the shit on her bed to the far end. When you look over at Rose, tear tracks are painfully obvious running down her cheeks but a disconcerting smile creeps onto her face as she sits up.

“Brother mine, have you- hic -finally decideded to pay me a- a visit?” Her breath makes your nose wrinkle.

You pry the bottle from Rose’s fingers and let it drop to the carpet below. Rose makes no move to stop you.

“Where’d you even get the booze, Rose? Nobody in this place drinks.”

Rose’s cheshire grin grows wider and she wiggles her eyebrows at you while attempting to shrug demurely. “It’s a mysterry, Dave. What seer poers can apomplish- accomprish- accom- do.”

She looks entirely too pleased with herself despite just stumbling over the same word three times over.

“Rose, you’re so wasted.”

This gets a giggle from her and, before you realize what’s happening, Rose once again surprises you with a hug. She rests her forehead on your shoulder after a moment, shielding her face from view. She might be crying. You’re not entirely sure how to go about consoling a crying girl so you awkwardly wrap your arms around her.

The hiccups are what really tell you that Rose is crying. They come with an awful sobbing sound that makes you wish you could bundle Rose up and take her away from whatever is hurting you. For the first time in a long while, your fingers itch for your sword just so you can protect Rose from her pain.

“I miss my mom, Dave,” Rose sighs into your shoulder, her voice steadier and muffled.

“Yeah,” you say. “I miss her too.”

Rose pulls back and squints her eyes at you, analytical mind still turning cogs even though she’s probably too drunk to stand properly.

“But you don’t miss Bro. Our father.”

Do you miss him? _Do you?_ Why does it always come back to this person? You miss your bedsheets even though they were ratty and thin. You miss your record table. You miss how the crows would delicately pull the snacks from between your fingers and bob their heads up and down outside your window as if in thanks. Was that home? Was any of that enough to be called a home?

The image of a bird stabbed through the chest, its wings spread wide, comes to your mind’s eye.

“No, I don’t miss him.”

Rose sighs and she sounds unhappy but not entirely unsurprised.

“I’m sorry, Dave.”

You sit back as Rose arranges herself beneath the sheets, eyes shutting closed once she’s finally comfortable.

A crease pulls her eyebrows down as Rose mumbles, “It would just be easier… if she were here. She never made things easier, but it wouldn’t feel so impossible if she were here. Everything is so… loud. And scary.”

She’s probably talking about her Seer powers. The wall in front of you remains an unintelligible mess, but Rose probably has a hidden pattern there. It’s a blueprint to too much information. A monument to everything that feels too much. Too loud and too scary.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” you echo. “Get some sleep.”

“Stay, please? Until I’ve fallen asleep? It’s hard otherwise.”

You could never refuse Rose anything so you lean back onto the wall and pull out your phone while Rose pulls the blankets higher over her head. Karkat has sent you a few more questioning messages so you finally respond to him.

turntechGodhead  [TG] began pestering carcinoGeneticist  [CG]

TG: hey yeah hold off on making me a plate for dinner  
TG: its gonna be awhile until i come down for dinner so you could just go to sleep  
TG: i know you have work tomorrow morning for some reason anyways  
TG: also rose isnt going to eat tonight probably  
CG: UM?  
TG: short story shit went down  
TG: long story rose is asleep and ill come down in a bit  
CG: THAT WASN’T A VERY LONG STORY BUT WHATEVER.

15 minutes later, gentle snores have started rising from Rose so you carefully disengage from the mess on her bed and make your way out of her room. You’ll have to see about helping Rose clean up later but, for now, it’s enough to get her to sleep a little. (Probably. You don’t have much experience with drunks.)

At this late hour, you’re used to sneaking through the house for food and drink. The lights are surprisingly off in Karkat’s room. With his insomnia, you’re used to tiptoeing past his room. Tonight, it looks like he got lucky enough to knock out for once so you hold your breath and try not to make a noise.

You realize you’re wrong when you make it downstairs to see the lights on in the kitchen. Karkat is slouched over the counter wearing pajama bottoms covered in a crab pattern and an oversized t-shirt you’d scrounged up declaring “Wings! 50% off!” Tucked in his hand is his phone and you think you recognize the GoodReads logo at the top.

“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” you ask from the doorway.

Karkat jolts up, phone nearly clacking against the granite top table. He’s been jumpier lately with you, but you aren’t sure what to make of it.

“Shouldn’t _you_ be asleep?” he says, eyes not meeting yours as he lurches to his feet and strides around the table to swing the fridge open. He starts piling spaghetti onto a plate so you take a seat while he pops it into the microwave.

“I can’t very well go to sleep without trying the spaghetti you insist you poured your heart and soul into, can I?” You pause, remembering something else. “Not to mention the apple juice you apparently homemade.”

Karkat pushes a plate and a cup of apple juice across the table to you before leaning back on the counter opposite the island you’re sitting on and turning on his phone again.

“Rose alright?” he asks, faux unconcerned.

“She’s whatever,” you respond, faux nonchalant. “What’re you reading?”

“I- You-” He stumbles over the sudden change in topic. “You Strilondes are too secretive for your own good. Also, what makes you think I’m reading something?”

You scoff. “Are you kidding? You’re always reading something.”

He looks up at you and (finally) meets your gaze as you twirl spaghetti noodles on the end of your fork. When he doesn’t say anything, you say, “Your spaghetti is good. As usual.”

At the compliment, blood runs up to his cheeks and he starts towards the door. It’s on purpose and you know it is and you don’t know what you did wrong so you scramble to your feet and lightly pull at his shoulder.

“Did I do something? Lately you’ve been acting bipolar with me. We’ll be chatting over Pesterchum just fine and then I enter a room and suddenly you can’t even look at me. I feel like I’m talking to two different Karkats.”

He shakes your hand off his shoulder and, when he looks up at you, there’s something strange and unfamiliar in his eyes. You’re reminded that Karkat has never just been some kid you know. He’s the boy of storms, a person made of lightning and thunder. He pulled you away from the End of the World and likely saved your life after you took your brother’s. He’s… looking at you like he can’t figure you out as much as you can’t figure him out.

You thought you were friends. Sort of. You are friends, right?

You want to be. You think. Maybe.

“Since when do you compliment my cooking, Dave?” Karkat asks, the question spoken like it’d be more appropriately tossed in an interrogation room with a light in your face. His voice reminds you of the dull rumble of a storm approaching and a shiver runs down your spine for no reason. “Since when do you notice the things I like to do and try to- to remind me to sleep more? Why are you acting like you give a shit about me?”

His tone is accusatory, burning, and you don’t know if you crossed some line by calling him out. You don’t know why the idea that you give a shit about him is so disarming.

“We’re friends, Karkat. Right? I haven’t been reading the room wrong, have I? If you wanted me to step off, you could’ve said so like ten hangout sessions ago.” You say it like you don’t care even though you kind of have started to like the guy.

At your response though, Karkat deflates. All of the tension drains from him as he mutters to himself, “Friends. Yeah. We’re friends.”

”I’m sorry,” he mutters and all the storm is gone from him and he’s just Karkat Vantas, boy who cares too much about inane things. “It’s just… something weird happened with the you from the future and it messed me up and I don’t know where we stand.”

“What kind of weird thing?” you ask, sitting back down to eat some more of your dinner.

He sits down beside you, a smirk spreading onto his face. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, Dave.”

You squawk in protest. “What! Dude, unfair. I have a right to know about all versions of me. He was _basically me_.”

Without skipping a beat, Karkat smugly replies, “I don’t recall whatever laws you’re invoking, Dave.”

“Listen, Karkat...” you say and take a swig of his apple juice. All thoughts about contradicting him go out the window. “With apple juice like this, you can make whatever legislation you want.”

The confrontation you had with him was worth it to be able to relax with him like this as he crows over your defeat and showers you with versions of “I told you so” and “Damn right, my apple juice is good.” You almost laugh. Almost.

  


As you stand in the middle of Kanaya’s room, taking in the pristine sheets of her bed neatly tucked in and every sewing needle and fabric swatch placed in its very own little home, you realize that, for all the time you’ve been living here, you’ve never before stepped foot in Kanaya’s room.

She’s rummaging through a basket of yarn, each ball wrapped perfectly with pins holding stray strands. The array of rainbow colors arranged in order contrasts in your mind with the tangled mess of purples and lavenders Rose prefers to work with.

“For what, may I ask, do you need this yarn for?” Kanaya asks as she hands you a bright red spool of wool.

“Socks. Hats. Whatever strikes my fancy. I’m just tired of making crappy little purple circles with Rose’s less than smooth yarn.”

“I never pegged you as a knitting enthusiast. You’ve never previously demonstrated an interest for it,” Kanaya notes.

“Rose has gotten me into it. She told me to start small, but I’m going to run with it. Put this video game in expert mode and just jam it all out. I don’t need any kid’s introduction to how to jump. Toss the IKEA instructions out the backdoor. Throw all of your deadliest monsters at me. I’m here to make a name for myself and win. Speaking of winning, got any tips for a newbie with the yarn? I need to prove to Rose that I’m incredibly capable of pulling off expert knitting techniques.”

Kanaya smiles at you with a seemingly kind affect before saying, “If you’re running on expert mode, you certainly don’t need any of the instructions given by this NPC.”

“Cold, Kanaya.”

She smiles more genuinely at you before looking askance, her hands smoothing out the bed sheets she sat down on once she’d passed you the yarn even though they’re already clear of any wrinkles.

“How is Rose doing? I haven’t heard from her since she arrived.”

“You’ve spoken to her before?”

Her dark skin makes it hard to tell if she’s blushing, but you think she must be by the way she can’t meet your eyes.

“I, ah… Originally contacted her to ask about your condition when I noticed the strange light emitting from your sunglasses. She provided much needed insight into your injuries that made healing you easier.”

“And talking about her heavily injured brother struck up good conversation?”

Yep. That is definitely a dark red tint over her cheeks. You recall Karkat’s smug grin as he lorded the fact that you definitely thought Kanaya was hot over your head. Wait.

“Are you two…” you pause, knowing there’s no way this will come across well. “Is Rose… gay?”

Kanaya wrinkles her nose at you, gentle amusement replacing her embarrassment. With a slender eyebrow raised and a knowing tilt to her head, she says, “Well, Dave. She is your sister and closest friend. I suppose you would have a better perspective on this than I would.”

“Alright then.” You stumble out of her room more quickly than you’d like to admit, the red yarn clutched tightly in your fists. You take a moment to stare down at the ball of yarn you’ve managed to steal away from Kanaya. Is Rose gay? Like. Actually gay?

You make your way down the hall and ease into Rose’s room. She’s got a tangle of yarn threaded around her fingers: the remnants of a previously neatly wrapped ball of thread. When she looks up at you, her open mirth at the chaos in her hands shifts into faint amusement.

“Somethin’ the matter, David?”

“It’s Dave, but go off I guess. And no. Everything is fine.”

You sit down beside her and hand her the red yarn. She immediately starts tossing it from hand to hand without bothering to remove the purple yarn already draped around her hands.

“Are you gay?” you blurt out and then immediately feel your entire being combust. You hadn’t meant for it to come out that way. Somehow, the word sounds twisted and wrong and judgemental rolling off your tongue and you don’t want Rose associating any of those things with you of all people.

Rose wrinkles her nose slightly as she looks you up and down, her gaze strangely steady and unrelentingly scrutinizing. You think you’d be sweating bullets were you a cartoon character. Instead, you are startled when Rose begins to laugh loud and long.

“I dint think it’d be this big of a revelation to you, Dave!” she cries out between her guffaws.

“You never said anything…” you reply, slightly miffed by the amount of joy Rose seems to be deriving from the tension she put you through.

Rose sobers up a little (ok not in the traditional sense, but she certainly became more serious). She begins distractedly picking the yarn from between her fingers and placing it in a messy pile beside her.

“I… think was afraid of what you’d think of me. I spose when you live in the middle of nowhere, it can be… difficult to dis… discern… who you may be attracteted to.”

You flop backwards with a satisfying _oomph_ and spread your arms wide, taking as much space as possible on Rose’s narrow bed. So Rose is gay. Anybody could be gay. You feel kind of dumb for treating this idea like an epiphany. Beside you, Rose is tutting as she busies herself with something. She pats you comfortingly on your shoulder before grabbing your hand. When she drops your hand back at your side, you lift it up to find bright red yarn tied around your finger.

“Perhaps Jade’d like yarn ring reminders…” Rose comments.

She shows off her own hand to you, a green string tied around her ring finger. “Look, we match.”

You tilt her hand back and forth. You hadn’t even realized Rose _had_ yarn that wasn’t purple or black.

“Why green?”

“A friend of mine has recently endeared me to the col-”

Rose is cut off by the door slamming open. Karkat stands in the doorway like a hurricane about to rain on a good time. He doesn’t bat an eye when Rose weakly waves at him and instead charges straight into his announcement.

“Rose, I don’t care how drunk out of your mind you are. Sober up and come downstairs because what you’re about to hear directly concerns you. Dave, I guess you are invited too.”

With that charming statement, he marches off ahead of both of you, probably to serve as the grating siren call that drags every person in the household down into whatever is going on downstairs.

You both take your time neatly sorting out the yarn the best you can before beginning to head down the stairs. As you half-lead half-carry Rose down the stairs, you can hear Karkat screeching at someone to shut up until everyone’s gathered.

“It’s bad enough that I have to listen to your depressing bullshit twice, let alone more than that as you spout it to every person who comes in here. Just wait for Dave and Rose and then you just have to repeat yourself once,” Karkat is saying reasonably. He’d sound more reasonable if he wasn’t screeching his rationale out at an unimpressed Sollux. Gathered around him are Terezi, Vriska, and Kanaya all looking varied degrees of bored or impatient.

He looks up then and catches sight of Rose and you.

“And did you enjoy taking your time?” he asks, eyebrow arched high.

“You know how it is with Time players, Karkat. I’m practically made of time.”

“Shut up, Aradia,” Sollux mutters and you all swivel your heads to look at him. He shrugs slightly in response. “Can I get on with it now, Karkat? Do I have your permission to speak?”

Karkat harrumphs but makes a hurried hand signal for him to continue.

“Alright then,” Sollux says. “Now that His Royal Majesty has been merciful enough to grant me the platform, I’d like to present some news that pertains to you all.”

He pauses.

“No. It probably better pertains to the entirety of humanity considering I have reason to believe that the world is going to end.”

“Excuse you?” Kanaya asks politely. Vriska and Terezi are no longer busying themselves with dawdling and hemming and hawing and have now transferred all of their attention to Sollux. Karkat just looks pained and slightly resigned. Were this any other situation, you’d be making fun of him for looking like he was about to throw up.

Beside you, you can feel Rose tensing up in your arms. She doesn’t say anything though and you wonder if perhaps this is what’s been plaguing her.

“What evidence do you have to present to the courtblock, Sollux?” Terezi asks, voice high and reedy.

“Terezi, I can literally hear the voices of the dead and the soon to be dead.”

She nods, “Fair.”

Vriska lurches forward and gets uncomfortably close to Sollux in an attempt to intimidate him, a sharp smile stretching across her face, “How do we know you aren’t lying?”

Sollux just rolls his eyes while, beside him, Karkat face palms. Vriska looks over at Karkat and then leans back, seemingly satisfied by some unspoken message Karkat managed to convey just be being as annoyed with her as he is with everything and everybody everyday.

“Any additional unnecessary dramatics?” Karkat asks as if he isn’t the biggest perpetrator of unnecessary dramatics.

Kanaya pipes up then, “I feel it is necessary to bring up the question of how, exactly, the apocalypse will begin and what it may consist of and why we’ve been brought together to hear this momentous announcement?”

Beneath her breath Terezi mutters, “If we can’t do anything, we might as well just ignore it and move on with our lives.”

“Yeah… I don’t actually know,” Sollux admits. And then, before anyone can speak up again, he yells out, “I’m not a Seer, assholes!”

At that point, you feel more than see every person’s attention hone in on Rose who is shifting uncomfortably.

Karkat, the confrontational self-proclaimed leader that he is, breaks the silence first.

“Rose. Could you uh… See the future?”

Your sister straightens out beside you, draws her hands away from you so that she isn’t leaning on you any longer, draws herself to her full height (which isn’t much but seems like it when she’s got that look on her face), and declares, “I’ve actually seen it already. But yes, it might do me well to work with another prophet.”

“And you didn’t _say anything?_ ” Vriska sputters out.

Rose shrugs imperiously, “It wasn’t your time to know.”

Karkat narrows his eyes at her, “That’s the most God awful excuse for fucked up behavior that I’ve ever heard.”

“Back off, dude,” you say and you can imagine that were he to have hackles, they’d be raised. In your mind, two guys stand at a fence and watch the horizon swarm with darkness. (Storm’s abrewin’, innit? _Ye._ )

“I’m sorry? Are you just okay with Rose keeping the _actual fucking apocalypse_ from us?”

“She said she had reasons for it. What were you going to do if you found out earlier? Rant at the problem until it went away?”

(Looks like it might be a big ‘un. _Ye._ ) 

“It’s not _about stopping it_ , Dave. We deserved to know that our lives might be ending soon!”

“Oh boo hoo. Your life might be ending any day, but you’re not crying about it. Shit happens.”

“ _Unlike you, some of us have lives to wrap up and loose threads to tie before we kick the bucket,_ ” Karkat grits out, stabbing a finger into your chest, and everything clicks into place. He’s right. Your days are a blur of meaninglessness. You don’t have the same drive Karkat does. You’ve got no plans for tomorrow, let alone the next month.

It wouldn’t make a difference to you if you died today.

Something crosses over Karkat’s face when you step back and away from him. It looks a lot like pain, but you blink and you miss it. Afterwards, he’s back to brooding. He doesn’t bother saying another word because everyone in the room knows he won that argument.

“Well, that was tense,” Terezi declares.

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Terezi, you’re the worst sometimes.”

“It was! It still is!”

You turn on your heel and start to head up the stairs, but a hand wraps around your wrist. You’re surprisingly unsurprised to realize it’s Karkat’s hand.

“Wait, Dave. I-” He looks askance. Everyone in the room is dead silent. “...You should go into Derse with Sollux and Rose too. Not just as protection. There’s someone I think you should meet if the apocalypse really is on its way.”

You pull away from him.

“Whatever.”

  


You go to Derse with Rose and Sollux because it’s the apocalypse and you can’t exactly ignore it just because you’re upset with Karkat. (And Rose.) (And yourself.)

When you step in with Sollux, you’re greeted by a tall spire lodged in purple sand dunes. It’s tilted just so that it looks like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The wind batters sand straight into your face so you hurry inside on the heels of Sollux and Rose to discover that the interior of the place has been decorated in the Coolest Shit Ever.

Littering the shelves and tables wedged into the place are sheets of paper covered in some kind of binary code, but those go mostly unnoticed because you have become fixated on the walls. Hanging from the walls are an assortment of strange skulls and fossils. Some have twisting corkscrew horns and others have oddly shaped eye sockets or teeth that are a fraction larger than you’d expect. None of them appear native to Earth.

Something like a pop fills your ears, interrupting your awe. In the center of the room, a girl materializes with long tangled hair and a tattered skirt. She looks between you and Rose before floating over to you.

“Hello, Dave,” she says and her voice sounds distant and removed, like it’s been caught in an echo chamber and distilled before projecting to your ears. “I’m the person Karkat wanted you to meet. Aradia, Maid of Time.”

“Oh shit, what’s up. I’m Dave, Knight of Time.”

In the background, you hear Sollux invite Rose upstairs to compare notes on the apocalypse.

“So,” you start to say after a brief awkward silence, “How is being dead?”

“It is an existence that I do not mind,” Aradia responds.

Awkward.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you die and how are you so okay with it?”

She shrugs and you doubt she actually gives a shit about anything you say.

“Perhaps in another life, I would have been outraged. I’ve lost 4 years of my life and I am only a specter of who I once was. But my Time with the dead and with the ghosts from the Past and Future who haunt Sollux has opened my eyes to the truth. I died because I had to. Such is the life of a Time player. We must serve as Time dictates because we have no other choice.”

Jesus fucking Christ. She’s really a shining ray of light. “Sounds like a depressing way to live.”

“We all live in this way. Time players are simply more aware of the sacrifices we must make so that Time may march onward.”

“How do you _not_ mind that though?”

“...I don’t mind anything, Dave,” she pauses, glances upwards towards the second floor Rose and Sollux disappeared into. “I think I only serve as a reminder of what Sollux considers a failure, though. I _do_ want him to be happy.”

“You’re worried about him.”

“No, I wish I was though.”

  


The metal rungs that were installed just outside your window for you are biting cold against your fingers. When you reach the roof, you curl up against the cold, your thick sweater guarding you against the wind tussling your already messy bedhead.

You don’t know why you keep climbing up here. Maybe a part of you misses home. (Absolutely not though.) Maybe you’re a guilty heart returning to the closest thing to a crime scene over and over. (Are you guilty or ashamed?)

The day has been full and busy and too many items wrapped in one bundle. Rose is a mess. Derse is a mess. Time travel itself may leave you in ruins but you already know that it’s in your future.

If you’re being honest with yourself though, here, on this lonely rooftop in California, far from where you grew up, it isn’t the realization that Rose is gay or that you are doomed that is keeping you up. It’s Karkat’s face playing on loop in your head. It’s as if your mind is determined to figure out the complicated meaning behind his microexpressions. For a guy who shouts everything out, you feel like you’re out of depth when you try to understand him.

_Some of us have lives to wrap up and loose threads to tie before we kick the bucket._

He was right. Fuck.

The thought fills you with anger and indignation. And privately, in the deepest recesses of your mind, you think you might be upset at disappointing Karkat like that. That you’ve just arrived and fucked up his life a little more and made it a little bit harder.

Scariest of all is that a part of you knows — has known from the moment you saw Future You’s expression when he looked towards Karkat — that, even if you and Karkat are distant now, something will pull you closer. That kind of inevitability scares you. It doesn’t scare you as much as the thought of being close to someone though. How can he forgive you for everything you’ve done? What do you do to convince him that you’re worth the time of day?

The shadow sensation of a sword handle gripped in your hands and the image of a man tumbling backwards into a hungry darkness flashes through your mind. Do you deserve whatever happiness you’ve caught a glimpse of?

If someone asked you if you even want to be happy, your answer would be “No.”

You wish you would though.

You fall asleep with the burning image of the flicker of an expression that had passed over Karkat’s face, unable to sort it from pain or remorse or disappointment. As you drift away, you ask yourself why you always end up with your back lined up with the edges of cliffs and roofs, only meters away from falling off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pining Dave: Activated.


	9. Mac and Cheese and Terra and You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once, it didn't take me several months to write a chapter.

The macaroni sticks to the bottom of the pan, which probably isn’t a good sign. That doesn’t stop you from digging in with your spatula to really scrape it off though. Everybody at the table watches you in silence as you chip away at the burnt crisp at the bottom of the pan. Does every household filled with a ragtag group of kids living together meet to eat dinner together?

After a few seconds of dead silence, the macaroni and cheese budges. In one solid piece. Yikes.

“Why is the home-schooled shit for brains on the cooking schedule?” Karkat asks as you try to wedge the mac and cheese into pieces and distribute them to everyone. “He can’t even cook an egg, let alone dinner!”

“It’s uh… mac and cheese pie, dude.” You completely intended for this to happen.

Jade stabs a fork into her hunk of mac and cheese pie. The whole thing lifts when Jade lifts her fork up to her mouth. “I think it’s nice that Dave is trying!”

“Yes,” Kanaya agrees, holding up a piece of mac and cheese to look at it more closely, “It is… nice.”

“It _looks_ amazing!” Terezi cackles and everyone at the table groans in synchrony.

“You don’t have to eat it, Karkat,” you say. “I only poured my heart and soul into improving as a chef to make you this innovative mac and cheese pie.”

“Shove it, Strider,” he responds around a mouthful, “If I refused to eat every crappy dinner you served, we’d waste a lot of food.”

“You really know how to woo a girl, Karkat.”

He flushes red with anger, but doesn’t respond. Instead, he shovels more of your messed up mac and cheese into his mouth and grinds his teeth as he eats it. He’s a real charmer. You can understand what Nepeta sees in him. (You really can’t. This guy, Nepeta? _This guy?_ )

After you’ve served everyone a slice of mac and cheese, keeping a slice to the side for Rose in case she finds the appetite to come downstairs for dinner for the first time in weeks, you take your seat between Karkat and Jade.

The conversation breaks apart and you find yourself fading into the background as Karkat and Jade speak back and forth over you about growing pumpkins or some shit.

“Why would we grow pumpkins?” Karkat asks, tone colored with disbelief and accusation. “The only thing you can make with pumpkins is pumpkin pie. You can’t even eat them like a snack!”

“I used to make pumpkin soups all the time!” Jade counters. “Dave liked it well enough!”

Karkat turns towards you, eyes narrowing. “Dave, did you like Jade’s pumpkin soup enough to be willing to grow the pumpkins for her?”

You glance between the two of them. At your side, Jade is nodding encouragingly at you. Meanwhile, Karkat is mentally holding this over your head. _It’s a trap!_ runs through your mind like an intruder planning on robbing you blind.

Thankfully, you don’t have to answer because you look up and say, “You look like shit.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Rose responds, voice hoarse and weary. Karkat and Jade’s heads swivel to take her in.

Rose really does look like shit. Her eyes are bruised with eyebags and her white hair is uncombed and oily. In the light of the dining room, the pallor coloring her face is noticeable even to you. The dark clothing she’s wrapped herself in only serves to emphasize how unhealthily pale she’s become since shutting herself away.

Everybody watches when Rose drags the empty chair out and sits down primly before her dinner.

“Now that I have your attention,” she says, “let’s talk about the apocalypse.”

She looks down at the slab of mac and cheese resting on her plate. Looks up at you. Doesn’t touch it.

“You’re all aware of Derse and Prospit, but does anyone know the nature of these realities?” Nobody replies because Rose sounds like a teacher asking a rhetorical question to an empty classroom. The smallest of smiles worms its way onto Rose’s smug face and you’re tempted to complain and ask her to _just get on with it_. “Derse and Prospit are parallel realities running alongside our reality, henceforth dubbed Terra.”

She reaches over and grabs three paper plates, shoving her plate aside (unsurprising, everyone seems to be taking the chance to not eat anything) and placing them evenly spaced out in front of her.

“For a very long time, these realities have been drifting, forming a Venn diagram of sorts.”

She overlaps the far left and far right plates over the middle plate.

“That’s us,” she says, pointing towards the points where the plates overlap. “We can traverse between the planes of reality because we are part of those connected to both.”

“But the planes are drifting closer to each other. This has taken centuries, mind you. And Sollux and I believe this is what allows him to have access to all three. He’s here.” She overlaps the left and right plates so that they’re slightly overlapping each other in the center of the plate representing Terra and points at this point where all three overlap when talking about Sollux.

“These are great theories, but what do they have to do with the apocalypse?” Karkat interrupts. Rose holds up a finger as if to silence him.

“I’m getting to that, gracious host. As the realities overlap more and more, the strength of their connections increase. This is why people are randomly being pulled into Prospit and Derse.”

Rose stacks the plates in front of her. “When they eclipse, there will be inevitable chaos.”

“And when is this happening?” Karkat asks, speaking for the rest of you.

“I don’t know. Soon.”

“You don’t know!?”

Rose shrugs and then smiles patronizingly at Karkat, “Seeing is not always clear. I’d estimate within the year, so prepare yourself for an exponential increase in random people being pulled out of Terra. That’s all I have to say; I’ll be returning to my research now.”

She rises from the table and starts for the door, leaving everyone behind in stunned silence.

She’s almost at the door when Kanaya abruptly stands.

“Rose,” Kanaya says.

Rose turns, eyebrow arched, faint smile on her face.

“You _are_ tentacleTherapist, yes?” Kanaya asks and Rose’s smile fades away. “I meant to introduce myself when you arrived but never found the opportunity to. My name is Kanaya; we’ve been speaking over Pesterchum.”

A flush rises to Rose’s face, but Kanaya doesn’t notice it because she’s too busy looking anywhere but at Rose. “Ah, yes. I am- Well- Yes, it is very nice to meet you.”

Kanaya looks unsure now, as if she stood up on a whim without a plan. “Would you perhaps like to see some book recommendations I think you would enjoy based off of our conversations?”

Rose is red as a rose now.

“Yes,” she says. “I think I would like that very much.”

“Oh,” Kanaya says. “Yes, that’s good.”

Rose gestures to the door, skitterish and awkward as she looks between Kanaya and the door. “Did you mean now?”

Kanaya bobs her head sharply, eyes widening as she fumbles to step out from beside the table and walk to Rose’s side. “Yes, that would be nice.”

The tension is palpable as they murmur between themselves. They manage to leave just as Terezi begins howling with laughter.

“They’re cute!” Jade exclaims.

Beside you, Karkat is silent, eyes fixated on the doorway that Rose and Kanaya disappeared through.

“You alright?” you say, and he startles out of his stupor to shoot you a look.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just don’t know how I’m going to manage to eat this brick you’ve served without getting constipation.”

You stab a fork at your own plate but the mac and cheese doesn’t break off. After sawing at the hunk for a few seconds, you push your plate forward.

“What if we just had toaster oven pizza today?”

A chorus of agreements and sighs of relief reach your ears.

  


It’s midnight when your late night conversation with John is interrupted by a loud knock at your door. Before you can stand to open it, Karkat bursts in like a flurry of winds scattering trash bags down an empty highway.

“Can I rant to you about something? You’re the only person who’s ever awake at this hour.”

You put your phone down beside you on your bed and gesture to the area around you.

“Make yourself at home, Mr. Vantas. Mi casa es tu casa. Tell me about your problems and I will tell you a detailed ten-step plan guaranteeing an improved mental state.”

“You don’t have a house, Dave. This is my house.”

You nod slightly and pretend to scrawl something down on an imaginary clipboard, “And how does that make you _feel?_ ”

A groan erupts from Karkat as he sprawls on the ground, arms and legs spread out as if to take as much space as possible. “ _Why_ did I think this was a good idea?”

You lean over the side of your bed and dangle your arms over the edge. He rolls his head to the side to give you a flat stare. “We’re friends now, Karkat. You said so yourself. We are the best bros on the planet. Everybody be hankering for fistbumps and friendships as pristine as ours. Rose didn’t think we could do it, but we climbed this mountain together. You and I are locked in for the bromance of a lifetime. People will make movies about how our friendship was strong enough to get you to visit me at midnight to spill your heart out to me.”

“I’m tempted to end our friendship right now.”

“That’s fair.”

You both become quiet for a single, brief moment. A rarity between the two of you now that you’ve started hanging out more as friends rather than awkward semi-antagonists. More and more quickly, you and Karkat have seemed to fall into a pattern of finding each other.

“I think there’s something wrong with me, Dave. I feel like I’m incapable of falling in love the right way.”

“Dude, what the fuck.”

He shoots you a look, “What happened to being my therapist?”

“Can you blame me for reacting to this conversation whiplash? Jesus, give me a second.”

You flop onto your back and stare up at the ceiling fan. On the floor, Karkat remains silent and you wonder if he’s glaring a hole into the back of your head. The silence stretches on into the realm of “awkward” before you realize he really is giving you a second to catch your breath.

“What got your panties into a twist, Karkat? Did you waddle up to a girl with daisy stems clenched tightly in your fists only to get rejected? You here to cry on my shoulder over a bucket of ice cream? We can burn pictures of her in the backyard if you really need an emotional boost to get over her.”

His voice is scratchy and irritated when he responds, rising up a notch in volume enough to drag your attention back to him. Your head lolls to the side so that you can take in the hot blush coloring his face.

“No- It’s- God. Fuck you, Dave,” he barks out. “I’m not fucking heartbroken or something. I just-”

He unknowingly meets your eyes when he looks up at you. Even though you know your shades make it impossible for him to see where you’re looking, you feel held in place, as if looking away from him now would be a betrayal.

When he starts talking again, his voice is just a mumble. “Have you ever met someone and felt as though you _should_ love them but you don’t?”

“Karkat, I’ve spent the last however many years of my life cooped up in a shitty ass Texas apartment.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m broken. Everyone gets to have their meet cutes, but I’m stuck wanting to fall in love but being unable to.”

He crinkles his nose and looks away from you, frustration plain on his face. A part of you hates that he was the first to look away, hates that even with your sunglasses on, you felt compelled to maintain eye contact with him while he gets to just… look wherever he wants. Another part of you is eerily reminded of Aradia’s words when Karkat talks about love.

_I wish I was though._

“Koi no yokan, wasn’t it?” you say aloud, remembering Rose regaling you with untranslatable words when she went through a brief phase consisting of scrawling down meaningless and unintelligible poetry chock full of words no kid should bother learning.

“What?” Karkat asks, blinking up at you.

“It’s the sensation that you will fall in love with someone even though you don’t currently love them.”

“That… is actually a pretty good description of how I’m feeling.”

“Who is this person you’re fated to end up with anyways?” you ask, curiosity getting the better of you. What kind of person would Karkat not love but feel destined to fall for? “You got a type or something that makes you just _know_ who you’re going to want to get your mack on with before you even want to get your mack on with them?”

“Dave, count your lucky stars that you don’t have to deal with feeling like you’re going to fall in love with someone without even knowing where you stand with them.”

You wonder if it’s Terezi. You know they had a brief falling out after Terezi forgave Vriska for the fucked up shit she pulled so it might explain Karkat’s confusion over where he stands. A pang of jealousy shoots through you. Over what, you aren’t sure.

Aloud you say, “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Karkat. I’m sure you’re a romance god. Just look around the room at the amount of romantic shit you’ve left me to drown in. If you’re into someone, you’ve got all the resources necessary to pursue them and the knowhow to do it properly, I’m sure. Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler are definitely the best teachers when it comes to romance.”

“None of my crushes end up at all like the movies, Dave. I think that’s why I like them.”

“Are we transitioning into existential crisis mode now? Are you going to tell me about how disillusioned with reality you are? All up in Sartre’s business as if you own the place. Fiction is your only respite from the cruelty of the real world.”

“The amount of bullshit that you allow to spill from your lips never ceases to amaze me. Whenever you speak, I feel as though I will have to wade through ankle deep crap.”

“Hey wait, but for real though. It’s Terezi, right?”

He responds with a scandalized screech. (“ _Excuse you?_ ”) And then levels you with an unimpressed glare. “Not that it’s any of your business, but it’s not Terezi who I have been friends with since forever.”

For some reason, relief fills you up. You try to ignore it.

“If it’s not Terezi then…” Several things snap into place in your mind, one after the other, and you’re talking before you’ve even been able to give it much thought. “It’s not me, right? Because I am the straightest person in this house, Karkat. Don’t believe a thing Lalonde tells you. There isn’t any homoerotic imagery shadowing my art or coating my dreams. Just me being a good old natural straight guy.”

The ramble gets worse and worse. “Not that you aren’t a great catch, Karkat. I just don’t see this working out because of who I am as a person. It’s not you, it’s me. I mean. I’m just not down with the gay. Not that I’m not okay with being gay like that’s fine. It’s just not my thing...”

Karkat gapes at you as you trail off.

“Tldr, I’m straight,” you finish weakly.

“After that astonishing lack of both tact and self-awareness, I think my cue to go has long passed. I’ll make myself scarce so that I never again have to watch you flounder in the toxic masculinity you’ve been steeping in for years. Jesus, Dave. It’s not you if that’s what you were trying to ask. I’m not that fucking stupid.” As he talks, he peels himself off the ground and starts heading to the door.

“Fuck, okay. Can you blame me for assuming? How can anyone spend an extended amount of time with me and _not_ feel hopelessly drawn to me?” you respond, but your heart isn’t in it.

Your eyes fall on one of the CDs lying on the bookshelf and you reach over to pick it up.

“Have you really watched _When Harry Met Sally_?”

Karkat whirls around to face you, eyes narrowing. “And what about it?”

You heave yourself off your bed and cross the room to the bulky, old TV hooked up to the DVD player that’s been collecting dust since you got here. Karkat trails off mid rant about how _you_ can hardly judge Karkat’s taste and media and _really_ When Harry Met Sally is a _classic_.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

You shrug. “Seeing what the big deal is. Wanna watch with me?”

Karkat seems torn between vacating from your presence as soon as possible and using you as a sounding board to rant about romcoms. Eventually, his love of movies must win out because he eases down to sit beside you on the floor, both of your backs leaning back against the side of your bed.

It’s only halfway through the movie that you realize it’s kind of gay to watch a romcom with a guy friend. The thought makes you tense up and phantom sensations tingling in your arms scream at you to reach for the sword leaning against your bed. A part of you wants to bundle Karkat out the door and call it a night, but when you glance over at him, arms wrapped around a pillow he dragged off of your bed and eyes wide as he silently mouths some of the words of the film, you realize you don’t have the heart to kick the guy out even under the guise of “needing to sleep.”

When the movie ends, you try to look anywhere but at Karkat as he quietly sniffles beside you. Is that even allowed? Crying over a romcom?

“It wasn’t _that_ good though, Karkat,” you say in an attempt to fill the silence.

“You are a heartless bastard with no appreciation for the finer things in life. If you ever criticize one of my movies again, I will have your head on a spike and your ass back on the streets,” Karkat replies, but there’s no real bite to his words when he’s busy crying over a cheesy movie.

You get to your feet and start flipping through the DVDs. It’s after making it through two stacks that you find something you can deem worth watching and crouch down to push it into the DVD player.

“We’ve gotta watch the Outsiders to counteract the gayness of that movie,” you say aloud.

Karkat makes a _harrumphing_ noise and says, “I don’t know if the Outsiders is the best fix for that, Dave. Ponyboy and whatshisface are preeetty gay…”

“Dude, you don’t have to make everything gay. It’s like you’re trying to depreciate the value of bromances and friendship.”

Behind you, Karkat bristles and you internally cringe as it sinks in just how shitty what you just said was. Damn your mouth, fuck.

“Dave, your poor education becomes more and more obvious whenever you speak. If you knew _anything_ about _anything_ , you would realize just how insensitive of you it is to imply that gay media is intruding on a largely heteronormative world as if it’s _easy_ for the LGBT to build any safe spaces in this society or have access to LGBT media. Frankly, after years of having no place in the world, I think it’s forgivable if LGBT people want to claim pieces of media for themselves.”

“Shit. Fuck. I’m sorry,” you say earnestly, and Karkat seems to relax slightly at your words when you tilt your face to make direct eye contact with him. Your apology apparently isn’t enough to keep him around though because he heaves himself up and starts heading for the door.

“Wait shit, Karkat, this has been nice. I shouldn’t have said that. Please don’t go,” you blurt out before you can stop yourself and _jesus fuck that’s so clingy and desperate and gay of you._ A mortified part of your brain is begging for Karkat to just keep on walking, but an overwhelmingly louder and more insistent part of you is pleading for Karkat to decide you’re still cool enough to hang out with.

Karkat turns and you catch sight of the confusion and reassurance on his face. “We’re good, Dave. I’m just going to get popcorn.”

“Oh.” _Please God, strike me from this Earth now._

“Yeah.”

You stew in your embarrassment for the ten minutes it takes Karkat to return to your room with a giant bowl of popcorn. He doesn’t mention the tension though and, fifteen minutes into the movie, you start to breathe more easily.

Karkat, complaining about the cold, drags your blanket down from the bed and, sometime in the movie, you find both of you leaning into each other’s warmth. It makes your palms sweat and your throat dry for some reason, but you ignore it in favor of focusing on the bulky TV set shining a bright light on the planes of Karkat’s face.

  


Karkat and you have taken to expanding your common interests from “Weeding the garden” and “Having Karkat teach Dave basic skills” to include “Watching crappy movies that Karkat believes are not crappy.”

Currently, you’re in the living room with Netflix pulled up arguing over what TV show is deserving of your time. You’re a staunch supporter of Friends, but Karkat is dead set on watching _anything else_ because he read one bad review of it.

“Come on, Karkat,” you argue, “Just watch the first episode. You’ll love Rachel and Ross, their story is totally your type.”

“I’ve heard enough about Ross’s crappiness to know that they’re _not_ my type, Dave!” he screeches in return. “Why can’t we just watch The Office, instead?”

Before you can provide your solid counterargument that you’ve both already seen The Office, a body crashes on top of you and, for a brief moment, you’re out of breath and convinced that you’re about to die because you dropped your guard.

Then you realize it’s just Terezi after leaping over the couch (for a blind girl, she manages to do an awful lot of damage.) She sprawls out in your lap like a cat and, beside you, Karkat inches slightly away with an expression you can’t read.

“What’s up, coolkid?” Terezi shrieks.

You shrug, “Asking yourself questions now, Terezi?”

It startles a sharp laugh out of Terezi. In the process of sitting up, she stabs you with her bony elbows and shoulders before settling down in the space between you and Karkat.

“How is the head of the household, Karkat?” Terezi asks, poking Karkat’s cheek with a long nail. He takes the abuse with a goodnatured grumble and roll of his eyes.

“I’m doing great, Terezi.”

“Ah, but I was asking about Kanaya!” Terezi replies, causing a long and pained groan to drag itself out of the depths of Karkat’s soul. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes while dramatically tilting his head back, effectively getting Terezi to remove her fingers from his face.

Terezi snaps her head to face you, quick as a whip. “Dave, you never gave me that list of webcomics you promised. I’ve been absolutely _dying_ for some good art!”

“Oh shit. Will the jury put me to death if I’m unable to procure the promised goods immediately?”

Terezi becomes absolutely gleeful at the mention of capital punishment, “Of course, Dave! The largest offences come at the largest prices!”

She gets close in your personal space, leaning in as if she can see into your soul even though she’s blind. It’s kind of true that she can considering her bullshit mind powers or whatever. “Do you not have the goods, my cherry-blooded friend?”

“I know you’d kill for a good murder, TZ, but unfortunately for you, I do actually have the list up in my room.”

You stand to go. Before you start heading up the stairs, you shoot Karkat a glance, “Don’t you dare put on The Office while I’m gone; our debate is not over.”

Karkat manages to keep a straight face when he calmly states, “I can neither confirm nor deny what I intend to do when you disappear up those stairs.”

“C’mon, dude. Do me this solid and don’t play The Office. Shit’s been played one too many times if we’ve both seen it; it’ll be boring.”

“Fiiiine, Dave. I won’t play The Office while you’re gone.”

“Those sound like blatant lies, but I’m going to trust you this one time, Vantas,” you say and then march up the stairs to your room, Terezi on your heels.

The sheet of paper is wedged beneath a book and you drag it out while chattering about the different webcomics you think Terezi would like.

“Ok, none of these really capture the iconic feel of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, but I still think you’d like them. Jamming On has got this great added soundtrack in the background that occasionally purposely glitches just enough to be noticeable without being jarring to add to the feel of the punchlines, you know? And I think that Projecc has enough of that crappy art and blaring colors feel that you’d have a hell of a good time snorting like cocaine. I can’t justify This Is How It Should Go. I just like the surrealness of the art and the absolute mad absurdity of the storylines it goes through. Maybe I’ll recommend it to Karkat; I bet he’d get a kick out of yelling about it. Of course, he’s a total cheeseball when it comes to plotlines. Falafel Hours has an okay romance plot, I guess if you’re into that sort of thing which I’m not.”

You pause, a realization dawning on you. “Fuck, he’s picking out a kdrama or something right now, isn’t he?”

“Who, Karkat?” Terezi asks, wrinkling her nose. “Yes, he most certainly is.”

“Your Seer of Mind powers telling you I’m screwed?”

“No, I’m just smart enough to know what Karkat will do.”

“Damn, girl.”

“I’m smart enough to know what you’ll do too, Dave. Be careful,” Terezi laughs, leering up at you. You swear this girl is made of knives. Even though she’s blind as a bat, you know she’s got the skillset to Fuck You Up.

“Here’s the list, TZ,” you say, handing her the crumpled piece of paper.

“Ah, thank you, Dave. I’ll have to postpone the scheduled public hanging for another day when I’ve found a victim more worthy of the punishment.”

She folds the paper up surprisingly neatly and places it in her jean pockets before stepping closer to you.

“I think I have an idea of what you’ll do, but I’d like to see it in real time if that’s alright,” she says and you make a sound like, “What?” but it’s cut off when she stands up straighter on her toes and kisses you. It’s less a kiss and more a peck, a single clash of your teeth before she pulls back. Were you flint and stone, there might be stones sparking, but nobody is around to fan the flames and you’re left frozen.

“Huh,” is all you can manage to say.

You think of Karkat waiting for you downstairs on the couch and then you stop thinking of Karkat because you _just got kissed by a girl._

“How do you feel, Dave?” Terezi asks and you are astral projected back into every faux therapy session you’ve entertained with Rose. Shit, shit, _focus_. You just got kissed!

It takes you a moment to figure out how your mouth works and then how to project words into your mouth through the use of your vocal cords. “I feel… weird.”

“So do I,” Terezi says plainly. “I don’t think we’d make a very good couple, Dave. Our cool levels would simply blow the minds of anyone who meets us.”

“That’s a fair assessment,” you say because you really don’t know what else to say. Terezi is definitely handling this better than you.

“Who would Karkat have to yell with if you spent all your time with me anyways?” Terezi asks with a smile that suggests dangerous things. You don’t know why you feel more nervous at the mention of Karkat so you ignore it.

“Speaking of Karkat, he’s probably queued up some shitshow for me to watch, so I should head back down.”

Terezi’s grin only grows wider. “I’ve got something with Vriska. Enjoy your time with our resident hothead.”

She wiggles her eyes when she says “hot” and you don’t know how to even begin to interpret that so you abscond from the room as quickly as possible. When you reach the stairs, you jump onto the banisters to slide down and keep a straight face when you greet Karkat again.

“‘Sup,” you say real casual like. You’re a totally normal and unfazed person right now. You sink down beside Karkat and he sends you a Look that means he’s about to say something that’s going to get you into a fix.

“Are you alright?” And yeah, you’re alright. Of course, you’re alright.

“Chill as ice, dude. Hit play on your uhh…” you trail off and narrow your eyes at the title even though you know Karkat can’t see your eyes through your sunglasses, “Chinese romance movie… Honestly, what the fuck, Karkat.”

“You wanted something neither of us has seen! This is something neither of us has seen!”

“What tells you I’ve never seen this before?”

“Don’t pull that crap with me, Dave. You’re so full of shit.”

He hits play and the movie starts and you can’t even protest very much because you’re still shell-shocked. For the entirety of the movie, you can’t help but sneak furtive glances at Karkat out of the corner of your eye, wondering if he somehow knew what had happened and, for some inane reason, worrying about what he might think if he did know.

Whenever you watch movies, Karkat gets this intense look on his face as if they are the most pressing thing in the world. It doesn’t matter that there are chores to be done, people to talk to, or even the entirety of reality to save. Everything falls away for him and he becomes completely absorbed in the movie.

A part of you likes seeing him this way, focused but not focused on you. He’s relaxed in a way you rarely see the guy considering he never sleeps. During the movie, his eyebrows rest low over his sharp eyes. He never even looks your way during the movie even as you study the way his eyes look like flintstones in mud.

In your head, you’re replaying the kiss you had with Terezi over and over. It was barely even a kiss, just a press of the lips and a flash and then it was done. For some reason though, you feel a sense of betrayal. You aren’t sure who’s been betrayed, if you betrayed someone or someone betrayed you.

From what you can gather, Karkat and Terezi definitely had a nebulous something before you arrived and you wonder if Terezi ever pressed a kiss to Karkat’s lips before. If maybe Karkat made the first move or simply fell apart. He said love was different for him, that falling in love took more twists and turns for him, and you find yourself wondering, as you take in the long shadows his eyelashes cast on his cheeks and the way his messy hair falls around his ears, _different how?_

The thought shakes itself off of you before you can really examine it closely and you return your attention to the movie. You lost track of the plot fifteen minutes ago and you’ll have to ask Karkat to explain what you missed.

You won’t mind it when he teases you for being vapid and then proceeds to explain the plot in the most ass backwards complicated way possible. You really just need a distraction from your thoughts for a while.

  


The hoarse caws of the crows circling above ring in your ears like pans crashing against each other. Occasionally, thunder shakes the gazebo and a bird plummets to the ground to disintegrate into dust, seared to a crisp by the lightning tossed down by the rainless storm hanging over the gazebo.

Rose is still as stone. Were it not for the dark bags beneath her eyes, you might take her for a marble statue draped in clothes. No wind touches her even though it buffets the gazebo on all sides. She might be asleep if it weren’t for the faint shift of her eyeballs beneath her eyelids sorting through whatever influx of information she’s dealing with now.

You’ve been at it for hours and you’re starting to get antsy.

“Ok, but why am I here,” you say.

Rose cracks a single eye open. Her mascara is dark on her silver lashes.

“Like I’ve told you repeatedly before, Sollux and I agreed that the horrorterrors shouldn’t be entirely entrusted with my safety.”

Your fingers rattle on your knee, tapping out a steady beat in time with your nerves. “And the horrorterrors are…?”

Rose sighs, out of exasperation or fatigue, you aren’t sure, and pushes her bangs back with her hands, careful to avoid smudging her eye makeup. Your sister isn’t a porcelain doll about to crack on kitchen tiles, but you still wish you could do more to protect her. She’s so… tired.

“They’re the powerhouses of Derse, Dave. Gods. Metaphorical mitochondria, if you will,” she explains for probably the third time over.

“And you trust them because…?”

At this, Rose tilts her head upwards and meets your eyes, a sly smile pulling the corner of her lips up.

“I don’t. Let’s go.”

Rose rises like a ghoul from a grave, feet dragging against the tiles of the gazebo from exhaustion. You follow behind, silent, used to walking disconnected from sound, stepping carefully over creaking floorboards and squeaking smuppets.

Above your heads, the crows spread their wings and dive down from the rooftop. Rose doesn’t blink, doesn’t react. Lightning crashes down, searing the wings of a bird. A feather the length of your arm floats gently down and you bat it away with your sword even as it disintegrates into dust.

You and Rose stand side by side, mirrors in the alabaster of your skin and your propensity to drone on about the most inane of the things. But where you are carved from an undercurrent of hyperawareness and caution, Rose has been built to be unyielding and intense. She waves her hand and a slender needle striped like a black and grey candy cane materializes between her fingers before your eyes. A knobbly skull grins at you from the end. A knitting needle, you realize belatedly. You glance down and confirm a second one is resting in Rose’s other hand. They are the most Rose things you’ve ever seen.

“They gave me a gift, David.”

“A gift?”

“A wondrous little present delivered to the closed door of a mourning girl’s heart. It served a twofold purpose, much to Sollux’s delight: an olive branch to appease the child whose mother was stolen away for a greater plan and a weapon with which to forge me into a sturdier tool. It was to convince me they were a trustworthy source of light in these trying times.”

Dark shadows coalesce down Rose’s arms and gather at the points of her needles as she speaks. She lifts her hand and stares at the way the darkness shifts and pulls, dark like a ball of ants swarming a forgotten apple.

“I wonder,” Rose mutters, “if it was truly a gift of generosity… or a revelation to a Seer.”

She lifts the needle in a single elegant motion with the poise of a dancer in the breath before the song starts. She holds it like a rapier pressed against the chest of an opponent. She brings down hellfire.

In the blink of an eye, the dark ball of energy shoots out and crashes into one of the gazebo’s pillars. It collapses inwards, caving easily without any support. Around you, lightning crashes down and the caws of birds are cut off abruptly. They plummet: a rain of dead harbingers of doom disintegrating before they even hit the ground.

Rose watches the destruction with a practiced eye. She is a conductor with a baton held steady, feeding more and more fire and darkness to the collapsed structure. Your hand tightens around the hilt of your blade.

“Damn it, Rose,” you complain. “Why am I even here if you’ve got both lightning and witchcraft on your side? You are perfectly capable of defending yourself from the murder stalking you.”

“I’m sorry, did my unemployed brother have someplace better to be? Perhaps I do not need protection. Maybe I just wanted to enjoy your pleasant company. Your constant chatter in the background does serve well as white noise.”

Rose bats her eyes at you dramatically when she makes a case for just wanting to hang out with you, a master of irony almost as good as you at times. The trick to every ironic gesture is a single grain of sincerity though and you can’t tell how sincere she really is.

Miffed, you admit aloud, “I _do_ , in fact, have someplace to be… I normally go grocery shopping with Karkat around this time…” You mutter the last line beneath your breath, but that doesn’t prevent Rose’s keen ears from hearing you.

“Enjoying your domestic bliss, Dave? I have to be honest, I didn’t expect Karkat to make a housewife of you. You spend so much time hanging on his arm though, I worry that you won’t have time for your lonely sister.”

“Oh shut up. As if you haven’t been glued by the hip to Kanaya ever since you started talking. I can’t have a conversation with you without also being stared down by your hot girlfriend. Wait- not girlfriend. Wait- not hot. Wait.” Rose gives you an unimpressed stare. “Shut up.”

“How interesting that you bring up my own romantic entanglements when trying to distract me from your completely platonic relationship with Karkat.”

You don’t know what Rose is implying, but you don’t like it. (You know _exactly_ what she’s implying and a large part of you _hates_ it.)

“Maybe it’s because I’m emotionally secure enough to recognize that my platonic relationship with Karkat isn’t under fire even if my annoying sister wants to convince me everything I do has homoerotic subtext.”

“Who said anything about homoerotic subtext?” Rose responds, blinking her eyes innocently up at you while lowering her hand. The gazebo is crumbling into dust a few yards in front of you and the raucous cries of the crows are much quieter now that about half of them have been decimated.

“Sorry to disappoint, but we’re not gay lovers. Just some dudes who hang out.”

“You hang out an _awful_ lot.”

You throw your hands up in the air, your sword swishing through the air. “The guy taught me to drive, Rose! We watch movies together sometimes! I help him with the groceries. We go to Derse and save random people from death. There’s literally nothing romantic about any of this. You’re like a crappy fandom putting romance where there is none. Sometimes, a guy and a girl are just friends. Often, a guy and a guy are definitely just friends too!”

“Mm. I’ll address each of your points quickly, Dave.” Her needles disappear and she starts enumerating her responses with her fingers. “Trope. Date. Hmm. Date and trope. Adrenaline rush combined with endorphins. Sounds like a recipe for romance.”

She sends you the slenderest of smiles with her last comment and you want to strangle yourself because you can almost see what she’s saying if you look at her words from afar or reflected in a funhouse mirror.

Gay? Are you gay? Or is Rose just working dark magic on your brain. Can Seers do that? Manipulate a guy into thinking he might want to kiss his best friend?

As if sensing your brain’s distress, Rose sympathetically rests a hand on your shoulder. “Is all of this internalized homophobia because off _him_?”

Funny. Even Rose can’t bring herself to directly identify Bro. The guy you killed. That guy. It’s been forever since you thought of him. You thought that you were finally _okay_. You thought that you were _better now_. Bro is dead, but you’re still here and the things he did to you haven’t gone away either.

Fuck.

Are you still the person your brother made?

“Let’s go back to Terra,” Rose says softly, gently tightening her grip on your arm to drag you out of your thoughts and back into reality.

The world around you fades away, replaced by the familiar dimly lit walls of Rose’s room covered in chaotic sheets of paper and purple yarn wrapped around small pins. Through the slits of the window blinds, you catch sight of the new moon: a hole in the sky scattered with pinpoint stars. You can’t look at Rose so you stand to leave before she can say something that will once again puncture your tiny teenage ego and leave you lying awake afraid of what you might dream like she once did when you were ten and still learning how to navigate each other’s twists and turns.

Rose stops you before you can go, hand swiping for your wrist and passing through empty space as your reactions kick in and you flashstep a few feet away. You wince at the hurt on her face. You haven’t flashstepped in months, haven’t shied away from touch or ached from guilt like this in forever. All it took was a reminder of Bro. All it took was a reminder of what you did and suddenly you feel like you’re back to square one.

You don’t want to be back at square one. You don’t want to only ever be the person your brother broke. So when Rose hesitantly steps closer to you before wrapping her arms around you in a hug, you let her. You breathe in the scent of your sister, finally clean of the pungent stink of alcohol, and you feel safer from whatever memories are shifting in the back of your mind.

“I know I don’t know the true extent of what he did to you, Dave,” Rose whispers in your ear, low and fierce. “But I promise you, I will always accept you as you are. I will always do my best to protect you from the vestiges of his control. You are no longer alone in that crappy apartment. You have me now.”

Beneath it all is the thrum of _I love you_ and you want to return the words so badly, you almost do. Instead, what tumbles out of your mouth is a nervous chuckle followed by, “I didn’t know you were so sentimental, Rose.”

She pulls back from you, but her face is not as upset as you expected. She is thoughtful in her gaze, assessing and open in the same breath. You know more than anyone that your sister was a seer long before she was identified as a Seer.

“I’ve learned not to hold back my affections, Dave. Time is short for all of us. Not just because of the apocalypse.”

You wonder what she left unspoken with her mother, but you have enough tact to not ask. You left nothing unspoken with your brother. You had nothing to say to him; there was too much hurt to find a voice for it.

“Okay, Rose,” you manage to say. _I love you too._ The great thing about Rose is that you think she understands.

Rose steps away from you and starts picking through the laundry covering the floor in search of her pajamas. “Goodnight, Dave.”

You leave in a daze, a bundle of conflicting emotions clashing in your chest. Your feet carry you forward down the hall and around the corner. When you look up, you’re not looking at your door, but instead at Karkat’s.

You could turn around. You _should_ turn around. Instead you swing the door open and shuffle in.

Karkat’s room is everything yours is not. The floor, for one, is clear of any debris or stray wires. The bookshelves are sorted by color and height. His bed is immaculately made, their grey bed covers spread out smoothly, and his desk’s assortment of pencils and pens are neatly arranged next to his shut laptop. Hunched at the desk, a lamp light hanging over his book, is Karkat shooting you a glare for disturbing him.

You pause and take in the view of Karkat clad in an oversized t-shirt he definitely bought from clearance and his pajama bottoms covered in a repeating red cartoon crab print. His hair is its usual tousled mess and his eyebags are as bad as Rose’s. It’s unsurprising, but what gives you pause is the thing welling up in your chest. The way your heart tightens slightly at the way he focuses on you with the weight of a storm behind his eyes. They way something twists in the pit of your stomach at the sight of the book beneath his hands because he’s _such a nerd_ and you _know_ that that book is probably some cheesy romance that can and will make him cry.

The feeling in your chest grows and grows and then breaks down when a wrinkle appear between Karkat’s eyebrows and he asks, “Dave?”

You start talking before you can stop yourself. _Rose thinks that I’m in love with you_ almost comes out and you’re almost relieved that what you actually say is, “Do you ever worry that you aren’t your own person? Like you’re just a person made by another person or something.”

You’re only almost relieved because what you said is only slightly better than what you’d almost given a voice.

You aren’t in love with Karkat. You can’t be. It’s not allowed. _Who doesn’t allow it, Dave?_ Rose asks in your head.

“What are you going on about,” Karkat asks flatly while putting a bookmark into his book and pushing it aside. Jesus fuck, he’s taking you seriously and giving you attention instead of ignoring you and going back to his book.

“I-” You gape at him like a goldfish out of water. “What if who we are today is all just molded by another person? Do you ever feel like you’re trapped in the persona constructed by someone for you?”

You’re not making sense. You know you aren’t, but Karkat frowns in thought and takes your question at face value, takes a moment to process your question and form an opinion on it (because Karkat _always_ has an opinion.

He leans back in his chair, staring into some distant point at his ceiling.

“My dad died saving Vriska and Terezi from Prospit,” he says. And it isn’t an opinion. It isn’t a confession or an admission. It isn’t… anything. The shock of it shakes you out of whatever train track your mind was hurtling down and suddenly all you can do is stare at this boy carrying the sky. When the world was made, the storms came first and then the skies were made to give them a home.

“Oh shit,” you manage to say.

“I don’t know all the details. Terezi won’t tell me,” and at that, his face flashes with an intense mixture of hurt and anger that sends a barb into your heart. “But I know that she brought Vriska to Prospit. And Vriska Vriska’d it up. And my dad… he didn’t even hesitate. He went in after them and died pulling Terezi to safety.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s been a few years. The ache gets easier to deal with,” he says with a shrug. Does it? You remember Karkat crouched beside Rose surrounded in broken glass, murmuring in her ear comforting words even though he’d never even had a real conversation with her prior to then. You remember a hand on your shoulder. Concern in the storm boy’s eyes over a mother you never got to know.

“The point I was going to make,” Karkat continues, “is that my dad never hesitated to help people. He lives his whole life working to help dreamers like you and Terezi and so did his mom before him and before her and on and on. I come from a long line of Prospitian dreamers who built this safe space for lost people.”

He finally meets your gaze, “It molded who I am today, but I don’t mind taking on this role.”

You sink to the floor and think of days without food. Moldy apples being tossed out of the back of your closet. A pair of glass blue eyes staring at you wherever you went. A sword clutched tightly in your hand and the jarring pain that accompanied blocking a direct blow under the baking Sun high above the burning Texas metropolis.

You were built to be a fighter. (A killer.) Maybe that’s all you’ll ever be.

“My brother wasn’t hotshit, but he was the only shit I had around to look up to,” you say and the sentence sounds broken coming from your mouth, a truth you can barely admit to even after you’ve killed the guy, even after you’ve started recovering from that life.

“I’m not my dad, Dave. And you aren’t your brother.”

“Aren’t I?”

Karkat carefully crosses the room to your side, slides down slowly as if you’ll be scared away, sits beside you with care. He looks you over like you’re a wounded animal in need of assistance. Maybe you are. The image of a dead bird cradled in a box crosses your mind.

“Your brother made you a fighter,” Karkat says, unknowingly confirming your thoughts. “But while he chose to hurt others, you’ve chosen to protect. You’re a fighter like him. You were made by him. But you are not defined by him if you don’t want to be.”

_Protector_. Isn’t that how Terezi convinced you to pull up your magic? For protection, not from fear. Karkat speaks plainly as if these are obvious truths to him and that faith is something worth protecting. You don’t want to be your brother. You can’t be if it’ll mean breaking Karkat’s faith in you.

“I used to think he was the coolest dude in the world,” you let out a bark of bitter laughter, sharp and hurting all over. “I was so fucking wrong.”

“Sounds fucked up.”

“Yeah,” you mumble. “Yeah, it was.”

“I’m sorry.”

And he really means it. This close to him, it’s becoming hard to breathe and hard to focus. Is this what Rose meant?

You’re not gay. _You’re not gay_.

A part of you wants to jolt away, wish him goodnight, and leave him behind with his insomnia and his books. Another part of you wonders. _Will you only ever be the person your brother broke?_

“Don’t be,” you hear yourself say. “I’m glad you’re here.”

You mean it. You really do. For all his intensity, his loud voice and even louder body language, the way he makes it hard to breathe and hard to think, you don’t want to go. You don’t want to leave him behind. You’re very careful not to think too much about what that might mean. You can deal with that later. You have Rose to help you deal with that later.

Karkat’s smile is soft and genuine. You want to bury your head in his shoulder just so you don’t have to die looking at his smile. You ignore that sentiment too.

“Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate the beginning because it feels too dialogue heavy, but I loved writing the last two parts with Rose and Karkat. I said Dave & Rose was an important relationship in this fic and I meant it!


	10. I'd Buy You A Million Red Waffles If It Would Make You Happier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been forever since I last updated and this chapter is still 75% shorter than my others. I think this is better in overall quality though, so there's that. Not even going to bother rereading this though tbh. There are probably like five grammar errors. I once misspelled "hole" as "whole."

He replays in your head like a scratched record. In the same way your body remembers the feel of your sword driving itself into your brother, vomit dripping from your mouth, and the glimpse of the Derse sky, dark and inky and terrifying, you hyperfixate on Karkat in fragments. Images and feelings are bundled in your mind, elbowing each other for space only to be dismissed as soon as they settle because _you are not gay._

But.

You can recall with perfect clarity soft eyes filled with the billowing clouds of a summer day. You like the sound of his voice: a rumble of thunder and stones tumbling over each other. You can’t stop thinking about how your chest squeezed painfully last night, when he turned to you with the intensity of the worst summer storm, and only had a gentle smile and even gentler words to give.

 _“I’m glad you’re here,”_ you’d said. Stupid! You sounded so stupid!

And gay as fuck!

You need to get out of here. The walls of your room, so comfortable before, have become constricting. You’d go to the roof, but your hands aren’t itching to heave yourself up onto a place that rings so loudly of death.

At the door, you pause to try and get your breath. A knock at the door sends you reeling ass backwards onto the floor. A strangled noise drags itself out of you like a fish pulled from your throat as every molecule in your body realizes that it’s _Karkat_ on the other side of that door because he’s the only one who knocks that way.

You don’t like him that way.

You really don’t.

That doesn’t stop your heart from leaping into your throat when his scratchy voice comes filters through the wood.

“Dave, you in there? There’s a Derse dreamer and-”

“Wait, don’t come in!” you call out as the doorknob begins to turn.

“What? What the fuck? Are you alright? You sound weird.”

_Fuck!_

“I-” _don’t-know-what-to-say-but-I-wouldn’t-survive-seeing-you-right-now-during-my-sexuality-crisis-because-I’m-not-gay_

Nothing comes out of your mouth. Your vocal cords have abandoned ship. They’ve shut down in the world’s worst-timed betrayal. Only moments ago, your mind was the torn battleground of a billion thoughts racing too fast for you to completely pick out. Now, your mind has been wiped clean and the only thing bouncing around in it are three emphatic exclamation marks demanding that you _panic._

“Dave?”

“I’m sick!” you exclaim in a surge. Your voice breaks from nervousness and you’d normally find that embarrassing (and a part of you is absolutely mortified), but you’re glad for it because it only makes your lie more convincing. “Take Rose with you today! I’m- I’m feeling really awful right now!”

Your last line isn’t a lie.

More words bubble to your lips uncontrolled, “Besides, I’m sure you’re getting tired of me hanging around you. I should give you some space, let you take a break from that constant Strider stench. I know I’ve got an addictive personality, but drugs are best taken in small doses, right?”

He’s silent on the other side of the door. You convince yourself he walked away halfway through your stupid rant, but can’t bring yourself to get up and check in case he’s still there.

You guess this room is your tomb now.

When he speaks again, his voice startles you, “Alright. I’ll see you around, Dave.”

And then he’s gone and you miss him like a drowning man misses oxygen. You hate that.

After a few moments of stunned silence, you pick yourself up off the ground, sentimentally pull on one of the dark sweaters that used to belong to him (but definitely not on purpose), and open the door an inch to peer down the empty hallway. Something like remorse wells up within you. Going to Derse is kind of your thing with Karkat and you just invited Rose to muscle into the territory. It upsets you and then you’re upset that it upsets you and the ouroboros of your mind eats itself up as you slip down the stairs, snatch the keys out of the bowl they rest in, and head out to the car.

You don’t have your license. How could you when you left everything rotting in that apartment? You’ll have to go back someday. Clear out the food in the fridge. Drag out your birth certificate from God knows where Bro stuffed it. You push that to the back of your mind for an older, more emotionally adjusted, version of you to worry about. For now, you’re willing to religiously follow the laws to avoid getting pulled over.

The road winds through these hills lazily and you almost enjoy the view of yellow mustard flowers clustering in the distance, coating the fields with the promise of invasively taking all of the resources in the land. You drive the only way you know how, the way Karkat taught you, to the only place you know well enough to drive to with ease.

Glass crunches beneath your feet when you step out of the car. The same overly optimistic neon sign brightly declares, “Open 25/8!” and a bell rings behind you as the door into the diner swings shut.

You pull into the same booth you and Karkat normally hang out at after returning from a trip to Derse, the names of all the girls you’ve liked before running through your head over and over as you desperately try to erase Karkat’s name from where it’s been carved into your brain. The diner is mostly empty; rush hour isn’t due for a few hours. Someone stands in the corner, cackling at the discs changing in the record player, probably high out of their mind if the smell wafting off of them is any indication.

The waitress bounces up to you, all smiles and faux excitement, and you’re too tired to properly look at the menu so you order the first thing that comes to mind and then let your head roll onto your arms on the table as your brain stubbornly refuses to focus on Jade or Terezi and continues to veer into dangerous territory.

To distract yourself, you uncap the pen you keep in your pocket and start doodling on a napkin. It tears beneath the point of your pen at first, but eventually you manage to doodle a few crappy steak mouths coupled with bulging eyes. More seriously, you sketch the frame of your waitress. You outline the shape of Rose’s chin and eyes, the way she looks when she’s focused on Seeing. The lines come more easily to you after awhile, and you lose yourself in the process of drawing whatever comes to mind. When the waitress comes to drop off your food, you barely acknowledge her and just keep filling in the lines.

And then you stop.

Heat drags itself up your cheeks as your face goes red. Distantly, the sounds of the diner finally filter in. The bell rings as someone enters. The song switches and a bark of laughter escapes someone’s lips. The buzz of the restaurant fills your head as you take in your immaculate drawing of Karkat, face set in that serious demeanor he always tries to keep up.

 _Jade,_ you tell yourself. _Terezi._ It’s useless.

Would it be so bad if you had a crush on a boy?

_Yes. Resoundly yes._

The sound of footsteps reach your ears and register before you truly comprehend what’s happening. The Devil slips into the seat in front of you, a slightly questioning smirk pulling at his lips. Your mouth becomes dry and your heart pounds against your ribcage.

“Feeling better now, Dave?” Karkat asks, amusement rolling off of him like lightning clouds, and you can feel the hair on the back of your neck raising as if electrostatic energy is running down your spine.

A barrage of curses fill you up. You _know_ he comes here whenever he’s returned from Derse. You _sat in his fucking booth._ You’re an _idiot._

“I’m,” you manage to croak out, “totally feeling better now.”

You feel like you’re going to vomit. Did a part of you subconsciously want to see him?

Karkat’s eyes fall down to where your pen is poised over the napkin. A bolt of adrenaline rushes through you as you reactively crumple up the paper and stuff it into your hoodie pocket.

He looks towards you curiously but is merciful and doesn’t comment. “I hope you aren’t vandalizing these tables with dicks. This is my favorite place, Dave.”

You went to his _favorite place._ Your ears heat up when you stutter out, “So it is, Karkat.”

Murder you. It wasn’t this hard to talk to him yesterday, right? When Karkat sends a confused glance your way, you resolve to be better at this talking thing and wrench your gaze away from where his hands have begun absentmindedly tracing circles on the table. (His hands are nice, aren’t they?)

Karkat gestures to the plate in front of you, “Are you even eating what you ordered?”

“I’m uh- less hungry than I thought I’d be.”

He drags the plate of red velvet waffles to himself with a smile. “It’s a good thing you ordered my favorite then.”

God, you ordered his _favorite._ He looks so pleased, you get the absurd thought that you’d order his favorite meal without appetite a thousand times over.

“How was Derse?” you ask like a normal, functioning person who can make conversation.

He’s expressive, you realize now. Really expressive. When he talks, he waves his fork and knife in the air wildly. He lets his face say plainly everything he’s feeling.

“It wasn’t as life threatening as they used to be. Rose handled it all really efficiently as if she were a professional Derse bodyguard. I missed your smarmy dialogue in the background though.” He stops. Flushes red. “A-almost missed. I didn’t miss you enough to demand that you accompany me. If you’re not up for it, Rose is more than enough of a substitute. _In fact,_ I’d argue she was _better_ than you and you’re really not needed if you don’t want to enter Derse anymore. And-”

“No, I still want to go.”

He startles. Looks at you with no small measure of surprise. “Really?”

“Yeah, I…” you look down at your hands, trembling in your lap as you sit across from a boy you might like more than you’ve ever let yourself like someone.

“My sword,” you choke out in explanation. “...It- It used to fill me up with dread, but now it’s this symbol for how I’m protecting people.” _People like you,_ doesn’t leave your mouth, but you look him in the eyes and hope you can convey something through sheer willpower even if your sunglasses are in the way.

“Alright then, Dave. I mean… I guess you’re tolerable.”

He shoves a spoonful of waffle into his mouth and looks away from you with a huff.

“Aw, you missed me!”

“As _if_.”

You beam at him from across the table. “You totally missed me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Strider. The only thing I’m missing right now is connecting my fist with your face.”

You flop forward dramatically, hand on your forehead, twisted to look up at him, careful to avoid flailing into his waffles.

“Ooh, Mr. Darcy, you’re _too cruel._ ”

“Shove off, Dave!” He kicks you beneath the table and you feel more confident that this will be alright. You can be friends with this kid looking down at you with absolute disgust. You can be friends with Karkat Vantas without falling apart at the mere sight of him.

A ringtone interrupts you both. Karkat glances down at his phone and then a grimace spreads across his face.

“I’ve got to go, fuck.” He looks down at his half unfinished waffles and repeats himself, emphatically, “ _Fuck_ this eclipse bullshit.”

You see him as he is for once and it sets your heart plummeting. There are deep eyebags beneath his eyes, an exhausted set to his shoulders. As he starts to pull himself out of the booth, you reach out to him on an impulse and set your hand on his wrist.

He stills beneath your touch. His hand is warm in yours, but you only half-recognize this because you’re too busy swallowing nervously.

“You look tired, dude.

He huffs. “Maybe because I _am_ tired.”

 _I’d buy you a million red velvet waffles if it’d make you feel better,_ crosses your mind.

 _I like you and it scares me,_ follows.

“I…” _I wish you could stay. I wish you could stay with me._ You take a page out of Rose’s book and say something you would’ve been mortified to even think last year. “I know you take care of a lot of things on your own, and I want you to know that everyone appreciates how strong you are. You’re really incredible, Karkat.”

Karkat flushes red and it’s kind of _really fucking cute_. You lose yourself in staring at him, taking in the tussle of his hair and searching his wide eyes for something you can’t name.

He breaks the trance when he pulls himself out of your grasp with a cough. He looks anywhere but at you as he takes a step back. “I’ve gotta go, Dave.”

He all but runs out of the building, face still red. You fall back onto your seat, heart pounding in your chest, repeating the list of girls you’ve loved before over and over like a spell. You clench and unclench your hands at your sides, all the time trying to barricade the flood of thoughts seeping in, the realization of something that can move continents and sink cities.

Names loop in your head, but they’re not enough. Of course they not. You are devastated by the realization that you have never felt this way before. Never this intensely. Never this dramatically. Never this _much_.

Your gaze falls naturally on Karkat’s unfinished plate. He eats his waffles square by square, cuts them into quarters along the lines before diving in. Your mouth is suddenly dry.

You can do this, you promise yourself. It tastes a little like a lie.

  


The house creaks beneath you. Ancient and aging, you’ve grown used how it bends with the winds like an old man rising after sitting too long, joints aching and crackling. This isn’t what wakes you up. Just as the late night traffic below your apartment became an easy thing to ignore, the odd noises of the Vantas household were easy to become acclimated to.

You don’t know why you’re awake, but you’re out of bed and swiping for your sword before you’re even fully awake. How many times did your sensitive sixth sense help you block a blow seconds before it landed? How many times have you awoken like this with shallow breaths and shaking arms, your brother a foot away from you?

Bleary, your ears don’t point out what woke you up until you’ve blinked the sleep from your eyes and realized there is no immediate threat in the area. Faint cursing reaches your ears. You check the time to see it’s just past midnight before slipping on your glasses and slipping out the door.

Karkat’s at the bottom of the stairs leaned heavily against the stair railing. “Who the _fuck_ gave this step permission to conveniently sit here for me to drive my toe into?” he’s mumbling beneath his breath.

A mixture of disbelief and shock have you interrupting his complaints about contractors and night vision, “Dude.”

His head jerks back to look up at you. God, he’s gorgeous. All tousled hair and rugged teeth.

“Did you walk home?”

He sniffs haughtily, the punk, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I kind of would like to know, yeah.”

He glares at you a moment before answering. “I took a bus, thank you very much. And then I walked the rest of the way. And it wasn’t hard. And it isn’t any of your business.”

“Why didn’t you ask Kanaya?”

“...She has a test tomorrow.”

What a dork. There’s a flutter in your chest you can’t tamp down.

“I could’ve picked you up,” you say offhandedly, as if it’s no big deal. _It isn’t a big deal,_ you quietly insist to yourself.

He somehow manages to stomp softly past you, head bowed down as his shoulder brushes yours. The contact sends an electrical current whipping through your body, but you manage to stay still. “I’m an insomniac, Dave. If I woke you up every time I needed something, I’d be disturbing you everyday.”

You move in one jerky motion, strung out by impulse and stress and this unknowable force that always compels you to reach out to him. Your fingers drag at his sleeve but don’t even lightly feather the warm skin of his wrist, as if there are still parts of you governed by hard limits and touching Karkat is stepping too far past them.

He looks down at you, face unreadable. If you are an open book of emotion guarded by a thick lens, Karkat is written in another language entirely. Or maybe you just never learned how to read people past “Going to attack” and “Not going to attack.” (Even that, you got wrong sometimes.)

“I wouldn’t mind it,” you choke out, “if you wanted to wake me up.”

He pulls his arm back, eyes skittering away from yours. You are cast asunder by his hesitation, the pause as he considers your words or lacks the voice to respond. You search his face, but you aren’t sure what you’re looking for or why your heart sinks when it finds nothing.

Finally, he responds. “Okay then. I’ll keep that in mind.”

A moment later he says, “Can I grab a movie from your room? I’ve been wanting to rewatch it, but the state you’ve left the room in is too messy for me to wade through. It’s like a tornado shat its contents all over the carpet and then you decided to try making snow angels in the crap like a deluded moron who has convinced himself moving things counts as cleaning.”

You’re grateful for the diversion. It’s a lifeline in uncharted, stormy waters.

“Yeah definitely,” you say, and then lead the way to your room in silence. The both of you hold your breaths as you tiptoe past unlit rooms, gentle snores barely reaching your ears. The moans of the house draw you both unconsciously closer as an instinctual fear of what might lurk in the shadows has you seeking out the warmth radiating off of Karkat.

Your door swings open soundlessly. It used to set you on edge, the idea that anyone could slip in silently, until your ears grew accustomed to tracking and identifying the different treads of the people you live with. You don’t live with a ghost anymore.

Karkat’s colorful description of your room is, understandably, an exaggeration. That doesn’t keep you from wincing slightly as he surveys the couple of wires haphazardly criss crossing the room after you’ve moved things around an innumerable amount of times, the clothes shoved in a pile against the wall from nights when you were too tired to neatly put them away, or the items you’ve collected shoved onto bookshelves and slotted amidst his abandoned books. It’s not a disaster of a room, but it isn’t as pristine as Karkat’s.

He walks with purpose to a bookshelf stacked with a mixture of movies and books, meticulously sorted by an inane system you couldn’t decipher when you bothered trying. Within moments, he’s managed to track down the movie he wanted and slips it out of its place in the shelf.

“You’re planning on watching _that_?”

The glare he shoots you could evaporate the ocean. “Well, I don’t have anything better to watch right now.”

“You’re planning on watching that right _now_?”

He huffs once and the look of annoyance on his face has your hands twitching at your side and your heart stuttering in your chest. _He’s the only one,_ you think to yourself. The only one who can make you feel this way. Who’s ever made you feel this way.

“I won’t keep you up any longer,” he says as he brushes past you. You watch him go and feel relief pour into you when the tension eases in your lungs. It’s almost immediately replaced by a painful wrench in your chest though as you feel compelled to reach out or follow him, as if your heart is tied to him by a thin thread and every step he takes away from you drags you along.

“I said I wouldn’t mind,” you blurt out, “if you woke me up.”

He sends you a weird look, but he’s not leaving anymore. His knuckles are white around the disc case he’s clenching. “What does that mean?”

“I’m bored, dude. Let’s watch it together.”

“Ugh, fine,” he says, rolling his eyes, but something in his shoulder relaxes and a part of you wonders about how many nights Karkat spends sleeplessly watching movies on mute. “I’m going to make popcorn.”

“I’ll come with.”

“Don’t be loud, asshole.”

You flashstep past him and something like a smile tugs at your lips when he whirls around spluttering. “I think I’m better at that than you.”

Something in the atmosphere shifts as you slip down dark alleys. You don’t find yourself glancing over at the shadows every three seconds now, too busy stifling an internal laugh every time you purposefully make the slightest sound and Karkat turns with a _shhh_.

“Do a youth roll, Karkat,” you whisper. “Embrace your role as the shittiest spy sneaking from room to room.”

“Dave, with all due respect, shut up,” he answers, but there’s no bite to it. He boringly crosses the kitchen with long strides and, after a few moments of carefully shifting items in the pantry, comes up with a pre-popped popcorn bag in his hand. You make direct eye contact with him through your sunglasses before rolling headfirst across the floor and popping up beside him and leaning your elbows on the counter behind you.

“That was so unnecessarily extra, show-off.”

“No, it was cool.”

“Nothing you do is cool.”

You return to your room with very little commotion. A pair of thieves in the night, you feel as though you’ve accomplished the perfect crime when you shut the door behind you and Karkat throws himself onto your bed before dragging himself into a sitting position, back against the headboard.

After unplugging your charging laptop and settling down beside him, Karkat pops the disc out of the case and boots up the computer.

“You’re not going to like this movie, but I don’t care.”

You lean back, shoulder brushing his and sending electricity running down your arm. You don’t care if you like this movie too. It’s hard to hold off sleep now that you’re beside Karkat with only the faint light from the laptop to keep you company. Radiating from him in waves is a dense heat that warms you as well as a blanket would.

Your mind wanders as you tune out the movie, another predictable romcom that has Karkat’s eyes shining in the dark. Out of the corner of your eye, you can draw out the image of Karkat. You memorize the light on his cheeks, the bags under his eyes, the tilt of his jaw. Your hands itch for a camera or pencil and paper, any way to preserve this moment longer even if it’s only artificial. A part of you is convinced that it is selfless concern for his well-being that wishes you could draw this moment out longer. You bury the other part of you: the part that enjoys resting next to Karkat just because you can’t help but enjoy being near him.

You don’t know how to help him, but you want to. You really do. You want to help him in the same way he’s helped you. In all the little ways he’s shown you that life is not confined within imagined barriers that resemble the walls of an apartment, he’s helped you heal. In all the bigger ways he’s saved you from yourself by giving you a cause to put to your sword and a place to breathe without worrying that you take up too much space, he’s helped you grow stronger.

The clock on your wall ticks slower. Something in the steady beat of your heart recognizes the dissonance in the air, realizes that something is out of place. In your thoughts on how to help Karkat, you’ve somehow managed to weave a bubble around the two of you. Aradia seemed to think being a Time player was only suffering, but if you can manage to extend Karkat’s respite only a little bit by slowing down the world around you, then it’s all worth it. He’s so tired all the time.

You’re lulled to sleep second by second. When your eyes finally slip shut, your cheek is pressed to Karkat’s shoulder and you can’t bring yourself to lurch away from his comforting warmth.

  


You wake up to the muffled sound of the movie playing in the background and the electric whirr of your laptop fan. Karkat is hunched on the edge of your bed, the palm of his left hand pressing into his eye as he reads a text message on his phone.

“Karkat?” you rasp out, pushing aside the blanket that has somehow been draped over you and starting to sit up.

“Oh shit, Dave. I didn’t mean to wake you. Go the fuck back to sleep.”

“What’s going on?”

With a grimace he says, “Another Prospit entry. I’ve got to go. Get some sleep, Dave.”

A groan slips past your lips as you throw your head backwards, “ _You’re_ the one who needs to get some sleep, dude. I swear you barely manage two hours a night. I can hear you pittering around your room at all hours and it’s fucking annoying as shit because _you don’t care about yourself enough._ ”

A sharp bark of laughter escapes his lips.

“Yeah,” he says, tone bitter, “That’s just how it is, I guess.”

“It’s just-” Your fingers curl into his sleeve as you lean into his warmth. “Why does it always have to be you?”

One of his hands rests gently on top of yours, callused from gripping a sickle and from the countless chores Karkat busies himself with. His tone softens now, as if he is the one reassuring you. And maybe he is, because you seem more torn up about the amount of shit he goes through for everybody’s sake than him.

“It just does, Dave.”

He leaves after that, and even though you flop back onto the bed and squeeze your eyes shut, the sound of the movie still playing in the background and the stifling weight of the blanket on top of you are strangling you instead of comforting you.

You get out of dodge. Toss the blankets off in one clean sweep and let them land on the floor in a heap. Drag your laptop across the bed, finger already slamming on the spacebar to pause the movie. The beat up pair of headphones tangled on the floor are looped around your neck before you tear the window open. Its rubber seal angrily screeches at the rough treatment, but you pay it no mind as you breathe in the cool California night.

It’s freezing out here. Every particle of cold coats your lungs like pinprick needles embedding themselves into a pin cushion. You set up the laptop next to you, hit play on some songs, and lean back to look up at the stars.

Which sky is better? This one, with its spiraling galaxies sprawling lazily outwards in a way that leaves you dizzy, the sky beneath which you’ve spent so long getting kicked around? Or the other sky? The one that feels like eyes pressing down on your neck, an oppressive silence you cannot negotiate. The sky beneath which you could finally rest easy as your brother faded away.

A bitter, vengeful part of you finds triumph in Karkat. Your brother is gone and you are here and you have won in every sense of the word. You don’t feel like a winner though. All you’ve accomplished is survival. All you’ve managed to do is claw your way to this lonely rooftop to wait for a boy whose hands hold the world. What space is there left for you of all people?

An embarrassing amount of time passes. Long enough for you to quietly admit to yourself that remorsefully gazing at the stars while pining after a dude is pretty gay.

The sound of footsteps far below have you blinking awake. You scramble to swing back into your room and hold your breath as he creeps up the stairs. His shadow reaches the hall outside your door. You listen as he hesitates a moment and then turns away. Before you can stop yourself, you’ve yanked open the door.

His hand is on the doorknob to his room. You stare at each other in silence.

“You’re still awake.”

You flush up to your ears. “Yeah. Do you want to finish that movie?”

There’s something inscrutable in his dark eyes. He looks… haunted.

“Sure.”

Once more, Karkat marches into your room and throws himself onto your bed before scooting backwards until his spine is lined up with the headboard. You drag your laptop over and sit down beside him before resuming the movie. As the movie washes over you both, Karkat doesn’t seem to pay much attention to it. His eyes are glazed over and his spine is ramrod straight. Slowly, you sense him relaxing beside you.

He melts into the bed as the exhaustion pulls him down and you watch from the corner of your eye as he curves inwards like a wilting flower.

Without warning, Karkat breaks the silence, paying no attention to the movie. “There was a guy.”

You don’t know how to respond to the gravity in his voice or the furrow in his brow. He won’t meet your gaze, too busy stubbornly staring at the people on the screen talking about unimportant things.

“Yeah?” you finally say, more as confirmation that you’re listening than anything else.

“He got pulled into Prospit after discovering his powers and…” Karkat somehow manages to slump even more into himself. “And using them to- to- I don’t know. _Abuse his family._ ”

“Oh.”

There’s a buzzing growing louder in the back of your ears threatening to spill out of your mouth and fill up the room. You and Karkat sit in silence until Karkat finally breaks his gaze away from the laptop screen to look up at you.

“Dave, are you alright?”

You focus on the sound of his voice like it’s a lifeline thrown into stormy waters.

“Yeah, I’m fine… Are... Are you?”

Karkat tugs a pillow onto his lap and hugs it close. You want to reach out to him, but you don’t know how.

“I didn’t manage to save him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“How fucked up is it that I was kind of relieved?”

You don’t know how to respond to that. You try anyways.

“Really fucked up.”

Karkat snorts, sharp and short. “Thanks, Dave.”

“But… I don’t think you’re a fucked up person for feeling that way. You’re like nineteen, Karkat. Not everything and everyone is your responsibility.”

He lets out a sigh at that, relaxes more into the pillow he’s clutching, before glancing over at you from the corner of his eye and sending you a semi-smile that lodges an arrow directly into your heart. This time, he is much more sincere when he says, “Thanks, Dave.”

“Er- No problem.”

When you wake up hours later, limbs loosely tangled with Karkat’s, you don’t have the presence of mind to move. In the moment, it feels as though the only things you are capable of doing are tracing the outline of Karkat’s silhouette in the dim moonlight and creating a cocoon of time around you and the boy you’re in love with so that he might be able to rest a moment longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y'all enjoyed Dave's gay panic. I certainly did.


End file.
